Building A Vegetable Trellis

My gardens always grow so beautifully inside my own head.

Last fall, while I was cleaning out the vegetable garden and digging in loads of composted horse manure, I had grand visions of all the wintertime work I would do in the cold months ahead. I would use my downtime constructively, Pa Ingalls style, building permanent trellising structures for cucumbers and peas, stringing together a functional yet funky bean teepee, and what the hell, I might even slap together a chicken coop.

I imagined myself adopting the thrifty principles of the urban guerrilla-type gardeners I see all the time on YouTube. These wily, tattooed people find stuff on the street and use it all in their illegal yet highly creative and productive asphalt gardens. They are forever picking up discarded bed frames (cucumber trellis!), loads of scrap lumber (raised beds!), and piles of long, stiff rebar (bean teepee!).

As the winter dragged on, it became increasingly apparent that I do not live in an area where people drop stuff willy-nilly on the street. The bed frames and the rebar were simply not forthcoming. And let’s face it. I’m not the type of person willing to sit and patiently weave a pea trellis from scraps of old T-shirts and jeans.

I like to dig. Give me big, backbreaking labor over that detailed and cerebral construction work any day. Last summer, using only a pick-ax and a shovel, I pulled up the grass and dug four 4' X 8’ raised beds inside wooden frames my husband nailed together in the backyard. These were to supplement the three beds I had dug out front the year before.

The kids and I planted the early peas about a month ago. I’m told that gardening is good for children. For trellising purposes, it’s rather important that the rows of peas go in straight. This goes against the grain for two-fifths of our family, which tends to make planting season more stressful than it needs to be.

The pea shoots were five inches high and threatening to droop when I finally caved in and sheepishly asked my husband to make me a chicken wire trellis. He had already made a cool cucumber trellis a few weeks before out of stuff he found in the basement.

Why didn’t I think to look in the basement? What was I doing standing out on the cul de sac waiting for the discarded manna to fall from urban-farmer heaven?

Brian came home from the hardware store and made a pea trellis out of chicken wire and some sort of plumbing pipe, which was way cheaper than the reinforced steel gardening sticks sold in the gardening department. He cut down the pipe, drilled it into some fencing poles he found piled under the porch and voila. Aside from buying the materials in an actual store, this was exactly what I had in mind.

Brian is a good builder. He does not run away from his responsibilities. He sees the whole complicated picture.

I should just stick to digging.