Easy Ways to Make a Trellis For Your Vegetable Garden

Growing plants on a trellis is a method of vertical gardening. It not only saves space, which gives you more food per square foot, but it gets your peas, beans, cucumbers, etc., off the ground and into the sun to increase yield per plant, reduce diseases, and make harvesting much easier. Growing flowering plants on a trellis improves their performance as well.

Strong, sturdy, and portable are the main requirements for a vegetable garden trellis

In vegetable gardens, a trellis takes quite a beating: intense sunlight and heavy weather take the fight out of any material eventually, so strength and durability are important. Why portable? Because crop rotation is very important in the vegetable garden. Your pole beans or cucumbers should be grown in different areas of the garden (or different raised beds) each year, and the garden trellis has to move with them. The exception is if you’re growing crops like grapes, raspberries, or blackberries or flowering perennials like clematis or climbing roses, which require heavier, more durable garden trellises. Even a fence will do for some of these.

The benefits of a garden trellis:

• save space
• make vegetables and fruit easier to harvest
• decrease the chances of disease by getting the crop off the ground
• easier to monitor pests and disease
• bigger crop yields per square foot – they’re growing vertically
• better aesthetics in the flower garden
• make vegetables, fruit, and flowers more accessible for those with physical mobility issues

There are many types of garden trellises

A garden trellis can be as simple as twine strung between tall wood or metal stakes or as complex as a permanent structure fastened to a wall. For permanent installations for grapes or espalier, one can drive nails into a brick or wood wall, string wire between the nails, and train the plant or fruit tree accordingly. Or, to build a portable trellis in 5 minutes, you can tie 3-5 bamboo stakes into a teepee-type shape, sink it into the garden bed, and let your peas go wild. In building a garden trellis, your imagination and DIY skills can be used to their fullest.

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How do plants climb a garden trellis?

Plants climb trellises and other structures via tendrils, twiners, scramblers, adhesive pads, or clinging stem roots: (source: Northern Illinois University Community Gardens)

• Tendrils: Wire structures along the stem or leaf nodes that reach through the air until they make contact with something they can climb.
• Twiners: Twining leaves twist around thin supports like wires, twigs, or other leaves. Twining stems twist around whatever they touch, like a pole or branch.
• Scramblers: Plants that “scramble” have long, flexible stems with thorns to grip neighboring stems. Unlike vines, they need to be tied to a trellis by the gardener.
• Adhesive pads: Some plants can attach themselves to nearly any surface with adhesive pads that grow from the stem tendrils.
• Clinging Stem Roots: Roots grow as a cluster and can attach to nearly any surface.

How to build a garden trellis

Before you build a trellis, you first have to know how your plant of choice climbs. Some are perfectly capable of wrapping around metal, and some are not. Some can be tied to a wooden fence; some can be tied to string or wire. You’ll also need to know how heavy the plants will be when loaded with mature fruits and veggies – there are few things worse than your trellis falling and crushing your nearly-ripe cucumbers under the weight.

A garden trellis can be made from just about anything that can stand vertically: metal poles, wooden stakes, old tree limbs, bamboo, or whatever else you have on hand. Vegetables can be left to climb up the poles themselves, or you can attach string or wire mesh between the vertical supports to allow for really prodigious growth of the vegetables. To get plants started and “trained” up the trellis, gently tie the stem of the plant to the trellis with garden twine, old shoelaces, or some other soft material that won’t cut into the stem.

Note: Using old wood is fine for building a garden trellis or even something as simple as an old step ladder. However, some older wood products may have been treated with chemical sealants or pesticides, so make sure you know the materials you’re working with. Any creosote or pesticide-treated wood products can leach dangerous chemicals into your crops and soil and should be avoided.

• Seed Savers Exchange has an excellent post on easy-to-build garden trellises for your vegetables.
• Or check out Fine Gardening’s article on designing a bamboo garden trellis.