Thoughts on trellising

[skeeter9]

I think I'm going to use t-posts with field fencing strung between them for trellising my cucumbers. This would make the trellises about 5 feet tall. Do you think this will be tall enough? I've never grown cucumbers before, so I'm not quite sure what to expect. I've looked at lots of pics showing suggestions and have seen quite a wide variety of heights. I think I will use the same setup for my tomatoes. Any thoughts?

 

[SweetMissDaisy]

A bit taller would be better ... but if that's as high as you can go, it will be better than grown on the ground.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I don't know which field fencing you are talking about, but as long as the holes have openings bigger than the cucumbers or tomatoes, it should work OK. I tried cucumbers in chicken wire and the cucumbers formed inside the openings. That did not work well. I tried tomatoes once with 2" x 4" openings. That did not work well either for the big beefsteak especially. But now I use the 2" x 4" for the cucumbers and cattle panels for the tomatoes and it works great

I don't know how you are supporting your T-posts, especially the ones on the end. When that fence is covered with plants, it will pick up a lot of wind load. I'd suggest guy wiring them or something to support the end posts. The intermediate posts would probably be OK.

If you trellis tomatoes, you may find you need to prune them. I cage now instead of trellis, but my tomatoes made too many stems or stalks to all fit on the trellis when I tried it. I had to prune them quite a bit because I had no room to tie them all up.

The cucumbers will probably run to the top of a five foot fence, then hang back down. I've done it on a 4 foot fence before and it worked. Five feet sounds good to me. Now I grow them on my deer fence. They often go up 8 feet or more.

Same with the tomatoes. The indeterminate will go up seven feet or more if they can. But with your 5 foot trellis, they will grow to the top then hang back down. Five feet should work OK for both tomatoes and cucumbers, but I agree. Taller is better but it is not always easy or practical.

 

[lesa]

I've never had my cukes grow taller than that... tomatoes can be a different story, depending on the type you plant.

 

[897tgigvib]

Sweet Daisy and Ridgerunner's thoughts on it are both real good.

If you still want to trellis the Tomatoes, at least double trellis them with a trellis on each side. You can run wire or heavy twine between the plants this way too. Be ready though with either some pruning, and or some tying of the branches as they grow.

 

[skeeter9]

I was wondering about the tomatoes because cages seem to better fit the needs of the plants. Maybe trellising both sides (maybe 3 feeet apart?) would be better, though maybe a little harder to harvest. Good idea on the guy wires for the end posts, too. I can do that easily enough.

The field fence I am talking about has openings similar to cattle panels, so they should be plenty big enough for both cucumbers and tomatoes.

Thanks so much for your input everybody!

 

[Ridgerunner]

Digits had a link a year or two ago that showed the projected yield for tomatoes based on letting them fall to the ground, staking, trellissing, or caging. I think those were the four options. Falling to the ground yielded the least, and the yield grew from there. That's been a while, but I think the reason falling to the ground was worst was because you lost more to rot and such. Think of the others as if you are looking at them from a helicopter. The stake would be a single dot. The trellis would be a line. A caged system would have length and width, giving them more space to grow. Maybe one dimension, two dimensions, and three dimensions.

If you cage instead of trellis, your rows need to be a little further apart.

I use cattle panels on both sides, leaving an opening between them of about 24" this year. I'm not saying that is perfect. More space might work out better. I had 18" last year and it certainly was not enough. I mulch real well, partly because I really like mulch, partly to control moisture, but also to control weeds. Even with the big openings in the cattle panels, it is a little awkward to get in there to weed. Plus a disease, blight, can get spalshed up on the vines from the ground when it rains. If you have a good mulch, that dirt does not get splashed up on the vines so mulch is a protection against disease.

When I use two panels for tomatoes, one on each side, I don't use guy wires on the supports. I do run wire between the two panels at a few points to sort of tie them together so they act as a unit, but I have not had trouble with the wind blowing them over. Trellisses are different.

I use bolt cutters and remove the bottom horizontal wire on the panel. That way I can push the bottom of the cattle panel into the ground, anchoring it. You still need the T-posts or some type of supports, but that anchoring in the ground really helps.

I tie some vines to the cattle panels initially, but not all that many. I sort of weave the vines through the openings as they grow. The cattle panel is just over 4' high, so the indeterminates will grow out the top and bend back over to the ground. I'm extending mine up an extra 2 feet this year to see how much that helps and what problems that might cause.

 

[ninnymary]

You can make 7ft. tall cages out of concrete reinforcement wire panels sold at Home Depot for $7.98. I myself used them to make a trellis's for my tomatoes. I LOVE it!

Mary