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Homemade Cucumber or Melon Trellises

I've been trying for several weeks now to get my garden trellises built for the vegetable garden. This weekend I finally managed to put two together, one for my cucumbers and one for my 'Tigger' melons. Building these two trellises can easily be done in just a few hours. I had to decide how high I wanted them to be and what kind of configuration I wanted. I was considering a simple 'A' frame design but instead went with this modified structure here:



The legs of the trellis are 5 feet long and the top horizontal bar is 24 inches. The base of the trellis stands at 45 inches and is 33 inches wide. The dimensions are designed to fit inside two 4'x3' raised beds. Making the first side was a little tricky but once I had spaced it out and screwed it together I used it as a template for the other three trellis sides I needed to make.


I opted to go with a homemade mesh made from garden twine or jute. Mostly because the price for simple garden twine is less than three dollars per roll and can be tossed into the compost bin at the end of the growing season. My first attempt (below) at weaving the mesh didn't look so hot but the second one turned out much better (above). I tied the vertical strings first then weaved the horizontal strings through so that each horizontal string wrapped tightly around each vertical string.


We had some extremely high winds this weekend after I built the trellises and they held up fine. These structures should last several seasons and can be covered with plastic in the winter time to extend the growing season as if they were small greenhouses. The total cost for both trellises was less than $35. Most of the wood was purchased for this project but a few pieces came from leftover scrap lumber used on previous projects.

What kind of garden trellis do you use?