Time to Build a Trellis!

It was early May.  The plants had been in for about a month and the cucumbers were already growing out in any direction they so chose.  I have never grown cucumbers before but I knew that the plants would need to be trellised in some way so I started weighing my options.  And that’s when I headed to Home Depot to find some supplies and build a trellis.

I started with two 2-inch pine boards (one 8-feet  long and one 6-feet long) and cut them in half. 

A 4-feet by 3-feet trellis would fit nicely in the area off of the small raised bed so I screwed all the boards together to form a rectangle.

After what felt like hours of wrestling with a roll of 10-feet by 4-feet chicken wire, I managed to unroll enough to cover the frame and staple it to the wood.

And here’s where I had a major light bulb go off and I must say I am super proud of myself.  I faced two dilemmas with building a trellis – 1) how am I going to attach this to the raised bed so it doesn’t fall and 2) how the heck am I going to move a trellis when I need to cut the lawn?  Well, the answer to the first question came shortly after having left Home Depot (go figure!). I could attach the trellis to the edge of the raised bed using hinges – the hinges would allow the trellis to angle off of the raised bed without any stress to the wood frame of the trellis.  So off I went to Lowe’s, which just so happens to be between Home Depot and my house.

Sometime after getting off the highway and halfway through singing Jason Aldean songs at the top of my lungs, it hit me.  The answer to the second question, right there rattling around in my brain.  If I was attaching the trellis to the raised bed using hinges, why not add some hooks and chains to elevate the trellis when I need to mow the lawn?  I am so smart sometimes…ha.

Less than a month after installing the trellis, the cucumbers have already outgrown their 12-square feet of trellis space.  Cucumbers are growing through the chicken wire and around the sides, staking their claim around my yard.  But their sprawling doesn’t seem to be an issue now, since the grass in my backyard started dying off about a week after I installed the trellis.  Now I don’t even need my genius elevating-the-trellis-to-mow-the-lawn invention.  Go figure!