Trellises!
Here is Kit modeling our new garden trellises. This is the first trellis so far and it’s over 24′ total made up of dean’s purple beans on the right and then Macaslan Snap beans on the left.
The posts are 4″ x 8 cedar posts from the local feed store and they are anywhere from 20-26″ deep. There is no cement or anything in the hole because we will have to rotate these trellises as their crops move around the garden.
The trellis is the Hortonova trellis found at Johnny’s Seeds. I bought the biggest roll of this stuff they have and I hope to have nearly a lifetime supply. I think the largest roll is 250′. The trellis itself is 6.5′ tall.
There is a single strand of “sharpie pen size” cable on the top row and it’s looped around one end and crimped back on itself. On the other end is a small 12-15″ loop with a high tensile fence tensioner on the end. This is also fence stapled. So the open end of the cable hooks into the high tensile tensioner and from there it’s just ratcheted down as necessary. The netting is stapled tight to the posts with a normal staple gun.
The whole thing looks sturdy and the height is going to be much better this year. Last year’s 5′ trellis got overrun massively by the beans and cucumbers. This year should be much better and the crops will have more room to spread out. Total costs were this: $6.59 each for the posts, $2.49 for the tensioner, about $3 worth of cable, $0.15 worth of crimps, and $5.76 worth of trellis. Total cost is $24.58 and I consider that reasonable considering the posts, cable, tensioner, and crimps should last 30+ years the trellis itself at least 3-4 seasons. The uses for all this stuff is countless so this is a nice thing to have at hand regardless.
Here’s another good shot of Kit laying in our new grass/clover yard. This is the side yard in the garden and it’s mostly clover. I guess I have some hope the clover benefits the garden in some fashion. She’s exhausted, obviously.
