I always fail to get my trellises up before I get my plants in the ground. Then I wait way too long and it’s a huge pain. Not this year. I already have my tomato trellis set up and a bean tunnel trellis for the kids. Hopefully, the rest will get done soon too. I have a lot of spring cleaning to do and there is upcycling trellis materials everywhere.
My first trellis is for tomatoes made of old camp chairs and tent poles. I cut and unscrewed all the old, ripped fabric off the chairs.
Then turned the chairs upside down and pushed them into the ground. The cheaper the chairs the easier to dismantle. The back rest part of the chair sticks out perfectly to use those poles to sink the trellis in to the ground.
They are also staked in with branches I found to keep it from blowing over. Then I added the tent poles across the trellises and wired them into place. This will add structural support and more support for the tomato plants. That is it. They will be less ugly with the plants growing.
The second trellis is going to be a bean tunnel. I am using my kids old cribs to make something similar to a bean teepee for the kids to play in. The two cribs will provide enough trellis materials to make a tunnel for them to crawl through. I will grow runner beans for this project, rather than pole beans, because they seem to be hardier and sometimes perennial. And maybe it will even provide a snack for the kids. I added a couple kid gates between the crib sides to make the tunnel longer. They are all tied together with some old clothes line. I will eventually add some slightly raised beds to the sides of the tunnel to provide good soil for the beans.
I will add some pictures once the tunnel is full of beans.
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