Construction almost finished

After a few days of cold and rainy weather, today was absolutely beautiful so I was able to get outside and get some things done. I put together the last trellis and erected it in its place. I found a pipe cutter in my toolbox and that certainly made cutting the conduit much easier as opposed to the hacksaw I used on the other ones. I wish I had found it a week ago.

Then I strung the trellis netting on the last two. What a tedious job that is -- tying all those little knots!

After that, I built the last chicken wire enclosure. I still need to put it up but have to cut some more clothesline and melt the ends first.

Lastly I transplanted some tomatoes and lettuce into some larger plastic cups.

Trellis and transplanting

Got the materials for the other three trellises and built one of them. Also test-fitted the netting on one. I still need to build two more trellises and two more chicken wire enclosures and then I'm pretty much done for the season as far as major construction goes.


Also transplanted my parsley (started 3/7) to the garden.

Trellis and hardening off

Built my first trellis out of 2x2's and bolted it to the cleats attached to the beds. Still need to attach the netting. I am still a little concerned whether it's sturdy enough. I'm just picturing a a netting full of vines in a high summer wind snapping the thing off. I still have some time before the trellises come into play, so I'm going to think about it some more.


It was in the 60's today so I had my parsley, broccoli and cauliflower out all day. I'll probably leave the parsley out overnight now that it will be transplanted to the garden in a few days.


UPDATE: Went back to Lowes to brainstorm a bit and came up with another trellis configuration. So I picked up the materials for one prototype and threw it together at home.

This is 1/2" electrical conduit slid over 4 ft rebar pounded halfway into the ground (just like the book says). The key that makes this all an affordable solution is -- rather than using those metal conduit elbows that cost $5/ea., I used cheap 1/2" PVC elbows (threaded on both sides) that cost $0.56/ea. I just hammered them on the ends of the pipe. It seems the threads compress around the pipe when hammered on. I couldn't pull them apart at all once on all the way.

I swear I saw this mentioned on someone's blog someplace, so I can't take credit for it. I was just reminded of it as I walked down the PVC fittings aisle. I did a search but couldn't find the post, but if anyone reading this knows, I'd like to give credit where credit is due.

Time will tell if this will hold up, but I think I'm going to outfit the rest of the boxes with this type of trellis and see how it works out this year. There is some give, but I think that's good/expected. The rebar is 2+ feet into the ground, so I can't envision a situation where they'd pull out. I also like the fact that they're physically less bulky than the 2x2's so probably easier to store as well.