Very excited about this season!!! This is my first year of serious gardening! I plan on making a trellis out if one inch PVC about 10 foot tall/wide.. I plan on using it for anything from peas to watermelons... Thanks for the link. Best if luck this year!!

Keep growing,

Joe

Lisa, your garden is lovely, so neat and tidy! I'm curious, what about the trellis weren't you happy with? It seemed to be working fine for the beans, that is until the cows got in there. Or was it the fact that the cows could reach it that is making you rethink the trellis?

I personally use what I think they refer to as livestock fencing? I buy it in 4' wide rolls at the home improvement stores. It's strong but flexible wire fencing and the openings are rectangular 2" X 4". Here's a picture from a distance of my climbing cucumber house. Not long after this was taken those vines were up over the top and going down the other side. This 3 dimensional structure is approximately 10' high at the center and 4' high side walls.

{{gwi:32524}}

{{gwi:32525}}

This 2nd picture shows a closer view of the side wall from outside of it. I made the frame out of galvanized EMT electrical conduit. I secured the fencing to it using inexpensive zip ties (these made it SOOO quick, easy and allowed you to really ratchet it tight. Much more user friendly than traditional wire twists. Every once in a while you might have to replace a few zips due to being exposed to UV but they're literally like a few dollars for 100 of them. Takes all of 5 seconds. There is a 4' rebar stake pounded at least a foot into the ground at each corner and the frame is zip tied to that to stabilize it. We have horrendous tornado-like wind and thunderstorms here and it doesn't phase it. I also have a center pole in the dead center going from the ground up to the top to give it some extra support. This is not for storm stability but rather to support the weight of 8 full loaded 12' cucumber vines.

{{gwi:32526}}

Here you can see some large cukes ready to be picked. I prefer the large slicing size as opposed to smaller pickling cukes. They just hang right through the roof. I have to grab a ladder to get some at the very top sometimes lol....stupid me for making it that tall.

{{gwi:32527}}
This was a pic of my first day harvesting my cukes! I was so excited I had to even make the basket pretty lol.

Anyway, I was really just recommending the livestock fencing for any climbing veggies, you could just do one vertical trellis like you're already doing as opposed to a 3-D structure. But maybe this will give you some ideas.

Really enjoyed your blog!
Danielle

Joe-That is great. Would love to see pictures when you are done.

Danielle-My netting just doesn't seem strong enough but it isn't bad.

Wow...you're cukes are amazing. What variety do you grow?

Nice photos!
We are planning to use alot of hugels this year. All natural way to go. After one year they are not supposed to need any fertilizer or water. Sounds great to me!!

I'm digging it. I've got at least one new idea to try out. Also hoping that mineralizing my fruit trees will get some better results than in the past.

Those are some super trellised cukes, BTW.

I'm pretty excited, cause I'm trying something new this year! My neighbors are moving to Hawaii and are selling us their 3x8x1' beds that are 3' off the ground! My chiro is very pleased also! LOL
It is, however a whole new thing to learn about container gardening as opposed to raised bed gardening! Different soil mixes, using fertilizer as opposed to my own compost, etc.
I will still have raised beds for my asparagus, tomatoes, green beans, root veges (that's another fairly new thing for me!) and stuff that would get too tall for the "raised raised" beds!
This all entails expanding the garden, so I'll be thinking more "potager" style for this section of the garden, adding a picket fence, a pergola for the entry with a sitting area, many more flowers and hopefully a fountain! All that expansion may take awhile! LOL, but I'm retiring in July, so I can make plenty of plans for the hubby to do! LOL Nancy

Thanks for the compliments guys and gals.

Lisa, those cukes were nothing special. I bought one 4 pack of Bonnie Burpless Hybrid and one 4 pack of Straight 8's from Lowes. They are planted in plain old field clay but I tilled it and added in some composted cow manure prior to planting. Some fish fertilizer when they were small and a little 10-10-10 when they were actively growing. We had hundreds of very large cucumbers from these 8 plants (4 on each side). That was year 1.

Year 2 was a complete and total loss due to the cucumber beetles moving in. I had never even heard of them before until they hit, and they hit hard. By the time I diagnosed that it was cuke beetles spreading a virus it was a lost cause. I replanted the crop 3 times and each time they'd look healthy for a week or so and then suddenly start wilting and be dead days later.

This will be year 3 and I'm going to try to keep a watchful eye and take preventative measures so that my cuke house will once again look like it did in these pictures. The woods behind it were cleared over the summer and the grass is kept mowed, I'm hoping the removal of that thick nearby brush and cover will greatly help. I also plan to use protective netting while they're young and growing as well as spraying if necessary. Maybe I can nip it in the bud early and get a good crop in between generations. Going from hundreds of delicious cukes to quite literally none in just one year was sooooo demoralizing.

This year I actually built a large wood framed bed to fit the inside dimensions of the cuke house (roughtly 8' X 9' and 10 inches high) that I am currently growing cabbage in. If the cukes take off like they're supposed to it will be pretty much completely shaded underneath in the summer so not many veggies can grow there at that time but the cold weather crops can get plenty of sun there until then.

Pete, that is an age-old gardening story:

First year, superb results with a crop, second year disaster with that crop. Two reasons. The first year saw lots of fertility inputs, and insect pests were unaware of the crop. Second year generally sees less or no inputs, crop is planted in the same or nearby area, and the pests have sniffed it out so the crop needed massively increased nutrition but didn't get it.

For very small garden areas my conclusion is that there is no good option other than to have gap years. So whatever crop is getting hammered, don't have it present at all for a year (at least). However, there are often acceptable substitute vegetables in a different enough family to achieve the effect, for example, go from common green beans to asian noodle beans. I don't know about cucumber but there may be something that would fit the "cuke" eating niche from a sufficiently distantly-related plant.

I had sevaral hundred cuke beetles one year. They fooled me because they were a type i had not seen before (striped, not spotted) and I didn't recognise them!

What worked wonders for me was a $10 packet of beneficial nematodes, combined with handpicking the adult beetles twice a day for a while, and soapy water traps. The nematodes eat the juvenile beetles, when they are grubs in the soil.

The following year I found only 5 beetles and had bounteous crops :).

Your cuke house is awesome, and I hope it works out so well again this year :).

Great pics...snow here tonight. Can't wait to get started outside soon.

Thanks for the tip about how you dealt with the little buggers. I'll look into nematodes.

OHHH heck yes!

Hi all, thought I would jump in here with a pic of my garden ready to go!

Actually planted a couple early items already, got carrots,spinach, and lettuce sowed in and (hopefully) popping up in a week or so. Just built the new trellises this year, for snow peas and green beans (wide one) and cucs on the other one.

and....Happy St. Pattys day all!