I love her set up!

Nice! If you’re going to get obsessive and overbuild, I’d say the garden is the right place to do it. 👍

Id love to see pics! That sounds like a great build!

Glad it was helpful!

Yeah, the 'dead zone' outside the trellis, that I can't reach easily from the other side of the bed, is the one downside. Works for pollinator plants, but if I had more space I'd consider straight trellises down the middle of the bed, instead of relying on arching it over the walkways.

I’m glad! And yes that’s the one part that irks me-in winter when I take down the panels the depth works really well and I can access from both sides, but in summers it’s awkward. The pollinator strip is a good solution for us

@@WellGroundedGardens Q NM K

​@@WellGroundedGardensWhy did you decide taking down panels a good idea?

Somebody else said the same and I am deeply impressed and also depressed that I didn't think of it. I *hate* overpaying for things. Awesome idea!

Is that allowed?

I’ve done it a couple of times. I do not think that the tractor supply near me stocks the 8 footers.

They were happy to cut mine into any lengths at the hardware store in frequent.

Your store has way better customer service-I’m jealous!

Hooray; I’m glad it was useful! Good luck-a few people have talked about how expensive they’ve been, lately 🤞

Glad it’s useful! I’d love to say that was an intentional idea, but it was very much a reaction to a flood last year-and now something I do on purpose :)

Thanks! Super glad it’s helpful; I love the comments section on this one-lots of good “crowd sourced” tips! 👍

I wish I’d gone the round route-enjoy your project!

I only heard about that idea after we'd done this and MAN I wish we had been smart enough to think of it. They're still good value overall, but it irks me to overspend, ever. :)

They (TSC) cut mine in half for me as well... Courtesy cutting! 😊

Rita West nice! I didn’t think to ask em.

You can actually fit a 16 foot in a 5 foot truck bed. KZfaq has instructions.

@@TheRainHarvester you can also watch some epic fail videos on you tube of people trying to get them out. Easy option for me was cutting them. And by doing that, mine have a different shape than the usual. The ones in my side garden look like a cathedral window shape and the ones in the back have a “flat top” where I bent two of the courses and zip tied them together.

I had the same slow, addictive spiral :) I am kind of curious to see how many I eventually build...

Thanks! I’m always trying new experiments…if you try something I haven’t covered , please share. :)

Awesome! Have a great growing season!

Glad you enjoyed it!

I’m jealous! Still too cold here to do much in the garden. Share photos when they’re up!

Glad it’s helpful!!!

Glad it’s helpful!

Shoot, made a similar suggestion before scrolling down to read this. But yeah. Anything short and not too terribly light-hungry would do on the inside there.

@@jeffengel2607 You also have to ensure the 'pollinators' are not nutrient hungry or 'invasive'. I believe 'Borax' is invasive.

Borage reseeds like crazy, so yes I have to pull the baby plants on a regular basis. But I've resigned myself to it. :D

Others are suggesting the same and I am going to give it a go this year.

​@@WellGroundedGardensI had wild mustard appear at edge of border. Saved lots of pods but 2bh it wasn't necessary 😂 I like borage too. I think I will add it in. I've searched and searched for wild yarrow. I think seed packets come from cultivars. What do you say. I think wild anything is better.

Glad it's helpful!

Glad it was helpful! The hair has definitely taken a downward turn during COVID, but thank you! 😊

Glad it’s helpful!

We placed the arches with their long axis running east-west to maximize the “face area” that’s facing due south. It means they cast some shade to the north, but we use that to protect things like salad greens so they don’t bolt as quickly. 😁

Yay! I'm glad.

Thanks! I’m glad it was helpful. Are you thinking of using one as a trellis?

Thank you!

I carried mine on top of my car roof

There is a video by Calikim where she and her guy rolled them up and put them in their SUV.

We rented a big van for 2 hours to buy them and bring them home -- easy peasy :)

We put cardboard on the roof of our car and strapped them VERY securely with bungee chords, anchoring the front and back ends especially so as to avoid 'lift' while driving. We looked like idiots but it worked well.

@@WellGroundedGardens 🤣

I’m glad!

Great idea!!! I think we've got enough height at the midpoint to still walk underneath even with a 'flatter' arch--I may give that a try this year! Thanks!

The price variance on these things is amazing. Even in this area there’s a wide range across retailers and regions, but the products appear identical. 🤷‍♀️

I’ve since switched to nylon trellis material but if I ever go back to using large cattle panels, and don’t have a truck, again, then I’m definitely doing that

I used the whole 16' to create a beautiful full tunnel with plenty of walking space and plenty of room for things to climb. I think this year, I will be using my tunnel area that's already built for flowers and use the second one under my two trees so I can grow plenty of pots as my trees lost several large limbs due to storms so my shade garden is now a sun/shade garden. The panels are very worth the money and very easy to put up. I'm 5'0" and I put mine up myself. The hardest part was putting in the posts. Happy gardening.

@lovelight9164 we moved to a new property, and I think I’m going to use the full 16’ long ones for our trellises, here 👍

For this garden (small) rotation isn’t really possible on the trellis without giving up too much growing space. Instead I grow polycultures of multiple plant families to balance the nutrients we are taking from the soil and to avoid creating a “point load” for disease organisms. The trellises usually have sprint peas, then tomatoes, beans, cucumber, watermelon, and some years Malabar spinach on them. Followed by fall peas to add even more nitrogen back to the soil. If I ever have a serious disease outbreak I’ll have to not use them for a few years and plant fumigants in the soil, but so far, so good.

Nice! What type of paint did you use? Our T posts are currently a dark green color

@@WellGroundedGardens I actually used a olive green camouflaged spray paint . It looks so good in the garden the paint is a flat sheen so it blends well with the background.

Nice! I did spaghetti squash a couple of years ago and may try it again, this coming year. What are you growing? I've been curious if they could support heavier squashes.

@@WellGroundedGardens I'm gonna try acorn squishes and the butternut type

A lot of people orient them north-south so that they get even levels of sun; we ran ours east-west and intentionally created different microclimates around them…a “sunnier” side on the south and then a “shadier” side on the north where I could (as an example) plant salad greens to help give them cooler conditions and delay bolting. Depends on your goals…but that’s always the answer 🤷‍♀️

omg I completely missed that :D

For that matter: with a 4' deep bed, you could put the trellis base 18" in from the walkway side - second foot-row out from that edge - plant the trellissing plants there and something short inside from them. You'd have an easy enough reach on the other side of the bed and an easy enough one of the walkway side too.

That's a great idea; somebody else said the same and I think I may try it this year. There's enough height at the midpoint to 'flatten' this out a bit and still walk underneath.

I was thinking the same if I can still keep enough height to walk underneath (the arch is 3' wide now and would be 6' wide if each one went out 18"). If I can, it'd be a good shady spot to try and extend things like spinach and lettuce in the summer.

@@WellGroundedGardens No reason you can't keep it up near the walkway on one side and deeper on the other to fine-tune the top height and shape too.

I’m glad! :)

We built these with the long axis running east-west, to maximize the surface facing due south. It does mean that the north side gets a bit less sun, but I use these mostly in the summer when the sun is almost directly overhead, anyway. I put “needier” things like large heirloom tomatoes on the south side and cherry size tomatoes in the north side.

Honestly, same. I have this obsessive habit of pruning the lower levels of things as they grow and that helps, some, at the end of the season. But cleaning off the panels is not at the top of my "fun gardening tasks" list, either. Maybe we could try lighting all of the debris on fire and burning the trellises clean. ;)

@@WellGroundedGardens Nah. Not good for the panels, will rust worse after burn. Let plants dry out, knock off with a broom. Pull up and discard roots. Or pressure wash if possible. Try small reusable carabiners to clip panels together. Keep the metal off the ground. Cheers !

It's called Fire.

I’m going to let you and Paul Moss debate that one ;)

I use cable ties to connect the cattle panels together. I use wires to connect the panels to the T post. My favorite veggies to trellis is pumpkins, butternut, acorn, spaghetti squash, green beans , cucumbers & zucchini.

I leave them in the same place at this garden-not because they’re hard to move (I take them down every fall for better access to my fall greens) but because with only the four beds, there’s no other logical place to put them. I make a point of putting in as many families as I can: spring peas before, beans and melons along with tomatoes, and fall peas after. But our new place has room for a much bigger garden and I’ll rotate them, there. Because we used zip ties to hold the panels to the supports, taking them down is as easy as snipping the ties. The hard part is setting the supports in place-at our next place I plan to build slots/sleeves into the beds so I can just drop in the panel supports.

Thanks! Glad you liked it. :)

Not as bad as Houston but yes; it gets well into the 90s here in the summer and pollen goes sterile at those temperatures, plus tomatoes don’t produce lycopene to ripen. So we’ve got a few weeks where we have poor production. I keep things well watered and I’ll use trellises to cast some shade by planting stuff to the north side of them, but mostly I work on acceptance 😂

Hi! We did a video on it: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/gq5zhq18xNDJqok.html. Let me know if that works. :)

We let everything die off in our first frost (usually mid-October) and then cut the vines at the base, near the ground, and pull down the dead plant material from the panels and add it to our compost. I cut the zip ties to “release” the panels but we leave the T-posts where they are. Cattle panels go in the garage for the winter. I’d say the whole process takes maybe 45 minutes? It’s easy to get the plants off of the trellis once they’ve died back.

Thanks! For me I’d only do a curved design like this if it spanned a walkway or access aisle…you don’t want to create a “no man’s land” underneath

Exactly. I have a small space depth wise (2-3 ft) but it has decent width (10 ft).. The trellis would block me out from accessing soil to apply fertilizer, pull weeds, etc. So thinking maybe I just do 1 side of panel held by 2-3 T posts. I’m wondering if it will be stable if the panel is raised off the ground by 12 inches? Or could it fall over? I plan to hang winter melon which can grow 20-30 lbs each so kinda heavy. That said, I plan to dig the T posts into the ground by 12-16 inches so hoping that is ok. Also considering if there’s a way to brace/support the T posts, but unsure right now.

@michaeljordan317 Jess at Roots and Refuge built her trellises that way-flat cattle panels attached to t-posts and raised about 18” above the soil. Here’s her video: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/ipuVZ9qXkrfYhaM.htmlsi=Tkj9uqQYPl26qqEJ. Your approach is solid l, though winter squash might be too heavy of a load for it…maybe add some diagonal bracing at the base of the T-posts?

@@WellGroundedGardens Great! Thank you for sharing the video and for the suggestions. Next I’ll need to see what kind of braces could work with T posts.

Worth a shot!

Nope, that one hasn’t been a problem for us 👍

We cut and remove the zip ties at the end of season when we disassemble the trellis (to allow full access to the winter veggies in beds from both sides), so they work well for us. But if somebody wanted them to stay in place for years at a time, UV exposure and weakening could definitely become an issue.

So you’re thinking of using the cattle panel as fencing (I am guessing oriented horizontally-about 4’ tall?) and growing up it? Or some other fencing material? If the panels, I think it’d work it’s just going to be shorter.

@@WellGroundedGardens Yeah the plan is to just make a few rows of fence with the cattle panels in their normal state. It will be shorter for sure. I have seen bit of other people who have done some short trellis like this and it works out good for them. The other thing I forgot to mention if you keep having to replace your zip ties as they age you can always switch to stainless steel one. They run about 100 units for about 10 dollars. If you want to see which ones are the best then look at Project Farm's channel, I think the video is zipties or something along that line. He did a year long test to see how aged zip ties held up. Just a thought! Thanks.

Good recommendation, thanks!

Where I live, you have to use partial shade in the summer when it gets too hot for tomatoes a peppers. So, partial shading is good here. It most definitely needs to be condidered.

I am the same as Joanie S--we do get some shade from the trellis immediately to the north of it (but honestly not much; the trellis is very 'airy' and allows light through, and we prune our tomatoes to single stems). But, it's a good thing for us--we plant lettuce and spinach in that area in the spring, and when summer comes around the shade from the summer crops on the trellis helps create a little microclimate where they don't bolt as quickly from the heat.

Awesome idea!

Thanks!

Glad it was helpful! 👍

We have the long dimension running east-west to maximize the southern exposure. That does mean one side gets more sun than the other, but we use this for summer crops and in the summer the sun is high enough to give plenty of light to even the north side.

Yes! They are 50" wide; if you turn them on their side and install them, that way, they'd be just over 4' tall. :)

@@WellGroundedGardens thanks

They are over a three-foot pathway. We did sort of a Gothic arch shape at the top-I like the look of a full, curved, panel better, but this functions just fine. It does feel a little tight when they’re covered in plants, mid-summer.

@@WellGroundedGardens That makes sense, thank you. Maybe I'll end up trying it a foot into each bed at some point.

Definitely worth a shot-you could plant salad greens (or other shade-lovers) in that one foot stretch. 👍

I mean; it’s a fancy-looking plant so that’s appropriate 😂

Yeah, I know! We shot this one about a year ago and since then I’ve invested in a proper microphone. Glad you liked the content. 👍

Hi! Its long dimension is east-west, so it presents as much surface area to the southern light as possible.

😳 Which part of Canada?

Tractor Supply. :)

With the caveat that I am not a structural engineer, I totally think that you could. Our 5’ ones are super sturdy but feel like a bit of overkill

@@WellGroundedGardens thank you

We got ours at Tractor Supply 👍

Interesting question-i imagine the acid in the interior of a tomato, if you, say, cut it in half and rubbed it on the trellis, could cause zinc to leach in...but the exterior of the fruits aren’t generally acidic. The portions of the plant that touch the trellis are primarily the vine stems and leaves, so it hasn’t been a concern for us. Definitely something to keep in mind for canning jars and food storage containers, though!

We got ours at Tractor Supply Co; you could try there if you have one nearby. The global supply chain issues might also be making these hard to get, right now. Ours was a couple of years ago. Good luck 🤞

Tractor supply, rural king, local farming coops

A few others mentioned this and I *really* wish we’d thought of it at the time 🤦‍♀️

Yeah, exactly-ours is only an “issue” because we use 4’ beds and access them from both sides during the winter (when the trellises are down). Your idea sounds like it should work 👍

@@WellGroundedGardens Have prices gone up a lot in your area since you made this video? Was $22 the standard retail price in your area or did you get a really good deal? The ones I could find were $75 so I'm wondering if those are overpriced or the new normal... Hard to say how much the price for all these things will improve too, how much is due to the current high rate of inflation, how much is due to supply issues, etc.

Several people mentioned that, and I wish I’d thought of it. Badly.

Whoa!!! That is a serious price difference. There may be other less expensive options that would still work. What kinds of plants are you trying to trellis?

I grow masses of pole beans and cukes. This year squashes will be trained on them as well. I did purchase the panels on sale($50 each... What a steal!🤪) but I still can't get over the price difference!

We’ve used electrical conduit in the past (like this tutorial: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/iq-ieMSimZ_NiIU.html). For me, a ten foot length of the conduit is $3.70. They’re sturdy and only a little more work to put together. 🤷‍♀️👍

Keep an eye on kijiji. I found hog panels on there for 55 for 16ft.

I've seen others do that, too!

Why is that?

Jess at Roots and Refuge does that to get more overall growing height

Whoa!

Yikes!

I used 8’ panels for this; they’re currently selling for $25 at Tractor Supply in my area (about the same as when I made this) and the 16’ ones are going for $45.

@@WellGroundedGardens thanks I'll check Tractor Supply. They ONCE had them locally at Home Depot and Lowes.... No longer. They WILL deliver from Lowes. HD says simply not avail in Dallas.

I'm in south jersey and I've located them at Tractor Supply Company for the best price. Other farming supply stores can order them in for you at request usually too. You'll need to buy cattle panels and bend them into an arch and secure them on t posts

Thanks for responding .Happy Healthy NEW YEAR 2021

I'm over in PA. If you make sure your top has a pitch, you can also cover this with plastic and have it shed snow so you can use it as a greenhouse during winter. Good luck with your garden in 2021!

@@FairieChele ooh that’s a good suggestion and good reason to move the bases of the t posts out from the edge of the bed and towards the center

@@FairieChele hi! Is that what they call "floating cover" or is that something else? Cheers!

Several people flagged this-wish we’d thought of it!

Many others flagged this and MAN I wish I'd thought to bring cutters. I hadn't thought through the issue of transport until it was too late.

If you root them they will grow into a completely new plant-but I’d recommend doing that at the start of the season so they have time to grow to full size and produce. Or do what we did and train them off to the side as a second main stem. This is for the true suckers (the ones that grow at a diagonal from the intersection of the main stem and a leaf)-not the side leaves :)

Interesting. Ours aren’t in contact with the ground, but I suppose rainwater does wash down them…

At the time we only had small cars-but good tip!

@@WellGroundedGardens ah. In that case arrange with Home Depot or Tractor supply for delivery.

This was several years ago but if I could go back, I probably would do that or take the other suggestion on here and buy a large panel, then cut it in half with bolt cutters

The plants that we grow on it shade the trellis with their leaves and it never gets that hot…it could maybe be an issue with very fast-growing crops as they climb up into the recently unshaded areas? Or maybe if you grew something “low density” that didn’t offer much shade it could happen… but so far we’ve never had that issue.

You can gently break them off, put in water for a couple days and plant. You’ve cloned the original plant. Did it with three of my favorites this past summer

I mean, it's not the end of the world if you ignore them. :) It does help ours avoid diseases if I keep them pruned, and as Bradford Homestead said, they make free plants for you. I did a whole video last summer on rooting suckers--they make really nice, healthy plants. Works for basil, too!

Good lord! They increased in price, here, during the post-pandemic inflationary period but nothing close to that! We’re at $42 USD for the 16’-long panels.

User error is real-we adjust every year.

Definitely good value for the money!

Other people suggested the same cable cutter idea. Wish we’d thought of it ahead of time! We don’t own a pole driver as we otherwise don’t have a use for one.

I believe it. Construction materials of all kinds went through the roof.

​@Well Grounded Gardens yeah. :/

We were building a house during the worst of that, and DEFINITELY felt it. :(

Ugh, sorry. The pricing is definitely inconsistent from area to area.

Well, the price rocketed up a lot and now at $25.99/sheet.

My top priority at the moment is saying the word “so” less frequently. I’ll add that one to the list. 😉

They’re still currently $22 in my area, same as when I made the video. I think it varies by region. Also, can we not make EVERYTHING about politics…? This is a gardening channel