The Trellises #1: The beginning of my garden trellises

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This is part 1 in a 4 part series: The Trellises

  1. The beginning of my garden trellises
  2. What to grow on garden trellises
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  1. Fall harvest

Protecting my garden and growing vertically with hoophouses and trellises. 

As you may know, last year the critters ate all of my garden. 

This year, I tried hoophouses to protect my plants and they worked great at keeping the critters out and my plants flourished.

Then, I saw videos where gardeners were using cattle panels for trellises… “hmmm, this might also work,” I thought.

My first searches for the wire panels resulted in pricing from $80-$250 each and that was not going to work for me. 

Then, I lucked out and found some locally for $55 and I bought three. 

That was in July (2022). 

Now, July is  a little late to plant a garden, here in Ontario… so I thought. But, then, I discovered that you could do “fall gardening”. 

Growing up on a farm, we harvested our crops in July and August. I never knew that you could plant in July to harvest in the fall. This was all new to me and I had my new cattle panel trellises sitting there begging for some plants. 

And, so the experiment began. 
I had about 70 days until the predicted first frost. It was worth a try. 

That is where the story began. 

How we installed the cattle panel trellises

  1. Mark where you want the edges of the trellis. We put the edges 5’ apart. This allowed for the lawnmower to go through the space and gave a reachable arch height.
  2. On each side, drive a t-rail into the ground. We put the flat side of the rails facing each other and made sure to have each tail driven in to the same height. 
  3. We braced one edge of the cattle panel up to one of the t-rails to hold it in place. 
  4. We pulled the opposite end of the cattle panel inwards, creating the arch, until it was sitting inside the the second t-rail. 
  5. We adjusted the cattle panel to ensure the rails were in the centre n each side. 
  6. We used heavy duty zip-ties to attach the panels to the t-rails 
  7. And that it is … time to plant!

a simpler life