Managing small spaces for gardening always requires some ingenuity. When you are growing vegetables, and looking to fit large harvests into a smaller footprint, it becomes important to plan carefully and design your container garden to maximize your available space.
One way to get more from a small area is to grow vertically, rather than horizontally, by using poles and trellises in your container garden. Many vegetables are climbers by nature, and well suited to trellises or poles. Peas and beans fall into this category. You can buy bush varieties of peas or beans, but even the bush varieties will usually benefit from staking. The best yielding pea and bean plants tend to be the vining varieties, which can grow to 8-foot vines laden with pretty leaves and plump pods. Cucumbers and miniature pumpkins are other good vining plants that will appreciate a trellis. These heavier plants will often need a sturdier trellis than peas or beans, to support the weight of the vines and the vegetables themselves. You can also sometimes find vining varieties of other plants, such as eggplant and summer squashes. You can use some real creativity with trellising, especially in a container garden. If you wish to make effective use of a wall space, you can mount a simple inexpensive flat trellis on your wall and let beans or teas climb up it. The vines will climb to decorate your wall like ivy, with little flowers and bright leaves, and the produce will be easy to access. You can also buy freestanding trellises for placement around your patio. Bear in mind that if you plan to place a trellis in a container, the container must be large enough and have sufficient weight in the base to resist tipping over. Plan for a deep container, and be certain to place the trellis securely. Related Post: How to Handle and Apply Pesticides Safely One of the more dramatic trellises for placement in a container are pyramid trellises, which can be placed in the center of a large container. If you start with a container of 24 inches or more , you can plant a pyramid trellis in the center. By training beans up the plant and growing lower-profile plants such as herbs or salad greens around the trellis, you can maximize space for produce and make a dramatic statement. Note that trellises don’t need to be expensive. You can buy simple unframed trellises at your local lumberyard for well under $20, and you can build your own pyramid trellis by building a teepee of gardening stakes and winding rings of twine or fishing line around them. A little creativity and effort can turn raw materials into an attractive and functional trellis. Don’t be afraid to try unusual things in your container garden! An old ladder, leaned up against a wall, can make an attractive trellis. If you are using a shelf for your pots, try letting yoru peas climb the shelf itself. Old chairs, railings, or any piece of furniture can be used as a support for vining plants. The only limit is your creativity!
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AuthorI'm Kenneth Evans. I've been taking care of lawns since I was eight –that was over 40 years ago. Archives
August 2020
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