Hi Nichol

Here is a view of part of my raised beds and trellis garden.
In the front, I am growing yard long beans, peppers, eggplants. In the back I have different melons and pumpkins.

Silvia

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Beautiful.

Silvia, your garden is beautiful, I kind of hate to post my pix following yours! But here goes...

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here are my cukes on a trellis

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here are my snow peas on a trellis

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Mary

I have raised beds, but they're not laid out with pathways between them. Here are some pictures empty so you can see the pattern and then full.
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Here is a picture from when we constructed the trellis
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It only gives me 9 sqft of trellis space, but it's keeping me in beans and cukes.

Here is a link that might be useful: The Corner Yard

mary I enjoyed your pics very much. This is exactly the kinds of things I am looking for as it gives me ideas and hopefully others, too.

What are the A frames in the back of your cuc's and do you have a pic of them?? Just curious.

I've been meaning to post pics, but I am really happy with the trellises I built this year. I spray painted electrical conduit black, and cut it a little longer than my desired trellis height, put it over rebar stuck in the ground. For the top I used a 2x4 stained with deck stain, and cut at an angle on the ends. Using a 3/4" speedboar drill bit I was able to make holes to insert the electrical conduit uprights into. Then I used small eye screws on the 2x4 and the raised bed to tie lengths of jute twine to. It has a really nice Craftsman style look to it, was cheap, and so far is really effective. It will also dismantle easily for winter storage.

WOW - those are some seriously BIG gardens!

WinchesterVA - how big is your lot?

Nichol,

Thank you for you kind remarks. Here is another pix of the a-frames. These are for my tomatoes.

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This is only my 3rd year growing tomatoes and each year I try a different method. My husband built them, they fold-up for storage. As the tomoatoes grow the stems lay over the cross bar. I am also tying up the stems as need be, but it's pretty easy so far, and I am happy with these.

I STRONGLY suggest wide paths between your boxes. When moving through with my cart of mulch or compost it just makes it easier to move around. I wish mine were wider!

This year I also eliminated all grass (really weeds) in and around the garden by laying cardboard down and then mulching the paths (and remulched those that had been done about 3 years ago). I didn't want to have to mow in my garden anymore.

Have a great day,

Mary

These are really great. I will post my current layout later today. I am looking at changing a little to a 4 foot wide raised bed with 2 ft paths between. I think I will fit a lot more in the already used plot and then will prob. expand from there. For my tomatoes I am currently just tying them up to a stake. I started out using reg. tomato cages like I usually do but it is the mid. of June and already my heirlooms were bigger than the cages. LOL It is my first time with heirloom tom's and I knew everyone said that would happen but I am pretty stubborn and did not really believe it. I do now. So far I like them ties up but we will see when the fruits really start coming on and getting big. The few that are full of fruit already seem to be doing well.

Question: If my rows run N-S is it ok to run rows of beans or taller things in between other shorter things? WIll they still get plenty of sun? I don't want them to shaded, but would like to use taller things as kind of barriers to help with seed collection.

Thanks for the wonderful pics and I hope others post and find this as wonderful and inspiring as I do.

Nichol

Mary, I would love to see a close up of those tomato trellis's if you ever are bored and happen to have your camera on you !! LOL

Lantanascape: I would really like to see a pic of yours. I am having a hard time picturing that but it sounds wonderful.

Nichol,

I would be happy to take a few close-up, front and side angle for you. I'll try to do that later today. I take my camera out to the garden every few days...did I say that I was new to this? I am and still am amazed at the change in my garden from day to day, so I try to snap a few photos that I can refer to the following year (just can't seem to remember all the way back to last summer...sad!)

I'm sorry that I am not knowledgable enough to answer your N-S planting question, I just don't know, and am anxious to hear a response as well.

Mary

Thanks Mary. This is my 3 garden that is BIG. I have a bad habit also of not writing things down and then cant remember the following yar. SO, I like you have taken to taking pictures of everything. Every few days I try. I was embarrassed this week though, b/c we have had so much rain the weeds were a green carpet across the garden. So I did not take any good pics of the whole thing b/c I wanted to get those gone. I was trying to hoe them b/c the tiller seems to bring up more weed seeds to germinate but they are calling for rain this afternoon and through tomorrow so I broke down and tilled last night. I have to hoe closer to the plants but then I will snap a few more and post some. I don't have cool trellises and don't like the layout which is why I am changing it but I will still post the pics later.

Thanks I love this sharing of pics and ideas with each other.

Nichol

Since I have to have a fence to keep the deer from eating everything, I use the fence as a trellis all the way around my yard. It probably seems like a strange layout but I share the yard with an Australian Shepherd and she has to have room to run so I made my beds against the fence and in one middle section. She is very smart and knows that she is not allowed to step into the garden areas.

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Beautiful gardens!

Lantanascape, I'd sure like to see pics of your trellis...I made something similar once, but it was not attractive. It was CPVC on rebar that was pounded in the ground. Then I drilled holes in the CPVC and ran jute thorugh the holes. It ended up looking like an upside down V, but rounded. It worked well, just not pretty.

Hey Ya Go Nicole...
Side view:
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Top View:
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Hope this is helpful. I find that I am tying some of the stems, but find it easier than tying to stakes, which I have used in the past. And you can see that they will grow through to top/center and then just hang down.

This year, in addition to taking the photos, I have started a journal, nothing fancy, includes, what I planted, dates of planting, germanation (if I remembered), pretty basic info.

Have fun and happy gardening.

Mary

Thank you so much. Your gardens are very pretty ruthie g from TX. I understand about the dogs, as I have 3. I am lucky that my vege garden is out of the backyard fence.

I appreciate the trellis pics Mary. I can really see it now. I am wondering how my stakes do this year, but will prob. try your approach next year. I think I am going to try several diff. ideas and see what works best for me. I think yours is a good choice b/c I get a lot of wind and it knocks things over all the time. My pole bean teepees are a joke LOL b/c of the wind. We even had a chicken tractor made and during a typical summer evening storm it flew up and away and my chickens were running loose all over the hill. My husband thought I was nuts b/c I was out in the lightening and high winds chasing my hens to put in the main coop so they would not wonder away. LOL

The A Frame looks to be more sturdy and self suporting in wind, anyway. I took a few pics and as soon as I get them loaded I will post them.

THanks everyone and keep posting the beautiful gardens. I think vege gardens are as beautiful if not more than flower beds (sometimes LOL).

Nichol

Ok If I load these right you will see my mess LOL :)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gardenmom2nb/3660807818/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gardenmom2nb/3660008369/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gardenmom2nb/3660003173/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gardenmom2nb/3660007319/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gardenmom2nb/3660005451/

In the last I needed to pull weeds still. I have 4 of the boxes but they are full of old lettuce, broc. and cabbage that needs weeded so I did not post those.

Nichol

Ok That did not work. Someone tell me how to post and I will fix them. Sorry.

gardenmom- add this in front of the url:

add this after:

" > (again, take out that space) quote, then the sideways v thing with no space.)

Great thread and thanks for the wonderful photos!

Ok If I load these right you will see my mess LOL :)

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In the last I needed to pull weeds still. I have 4 of the boxes but they are full of old lettuce, broc. and cabbage that needs weeded so I did not post those.

Nichol

OK trying this again with Howards help. I was using the url at the top of the page for the internest address. OOPS !! LOL

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Ok here goes LOL

Gardenmom2,

glad I could help. Since I'm here, here's a pic of a trellis I threw together for my pole beans. Just some lumber I had laying around and a piece of fence I found tucked in the corner of the yard. The beans were sown June 13.


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OK, here are some pics of my trellises. This is the main one, which is 3, 4-foot sections with 4 uprights. I drilled all the way through the end 2x4's on one side so the conduit could slip all the way through and the middle 2x4 could go on top. I did have to attach them to each other with a small piece of wood visible behind the conduit to prevent slippage. I conceived of them as something to match the wooden garden fence, and my future arbor and bench.

Here is the top:
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The full length of one side showing where it inserts into the PVC in my raised bed. There are screw eyes in the 2x4s and top edge of the raised bed that the twine is attached to:
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And here is a 4' long trellis that has 2x2 for the top. It's a lighter weight trellis, which seems to be adequate for beans.
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If you need something heavy duty, you could go with a larger size of conduit, although that would of course increase the price. It would also be easy to use CRW or cattle panels on this frame for a heavier trellis for melons or squash. Hope that helps!

Just bumping this up for the folks who requested photos. ;-)

Here are some photos of my garden.

I don't consider it particularly large, but its not particularly small either.

From early in the season so you can see the main section:
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The 3 Sisters garden:
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The pumpkin patch (from a couple weeks ago):
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And now for the Trellises.

The driveway flowerbed -- with yardlong beans and eggplant that won't grow (there is another trellis like this between the windows at the front of the house):
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The first trellis DH built. Nice to look at, but hard to harvest:
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The cucumber trellis, with bamboo rods woven in because I've never seen a cucumber top a 4" fence before and these are going insane:
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The birdbath, from a couple weeks ago before the beans came up and started to climb:
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Here's the trellis my DH built for our pole beans this year.

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The beans love it!

Here is a link that might be useful: The Haphazard Gardener

My trellis is framed with leftover African Mahogany pieces (same as my tomato stakes); they're durable enough to reuse a number of times before the bottoms need to be cut off and re-pointed.

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(Beans out of sight below, just starting the climb.)

I love all the different ideas for trellis and gardens everyone. Keep them coming.

Nichol

I'm not very good at the photography thing, but here's my best.

Here's my garden as of 6/25 - you can only see the front few beds, but there are 9 beds in this picture (3 more 4X4 to the right that I couldn't fit in).

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This is a close up of one of the trellis. It's just the simple conduit, with nylon netting, with the conduit slipped over rebar pounded into the ground. I did spray paint the conduit with brown rustoleum, just to make it blend in a little better. As a reference, the plants on the left you see climbing it are Sugar Snap peas - trellis is 7 ft tall, and they are at least 2 ft above it!

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JWStell - I understand about the peas going crazy this year - The seed packet said they'd go about 4 feet and they are all at least 7! EEEK!

Mine are a little similar to jwstell's. The trellis for the pole beans/cukes is 10 ft electrical conduit with nylon netting and you can also see 8 ft electrical conduit with cattle panel trellis for the tomatoes.

The picture is 2 weeks old as flickr says I have to wait until July before I can post more pictures. :)

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This is my bean trellis last year. Three foot long steel fence posts were driven into the ground at the corners. The rest is eight foot long furring strips bolted to the fence posts and lashed together with binder twine. Beans are climbing on binder twine strings.

My reason for doing it that way was that short steel stakes are easier to drive than long wood poles and lashing doesn't require precise alignment of holes as screws would.

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The beans are Fortex on the right and Tarbais on the left.

Jim