I live up high on a hill & also experience very high winds. I have had extremely good luck just screwing 1x or 2x2's with 1 sheetrock screw & 1 carriage bolt to the bed frame. My bed frames are just placed on top of the ground - btw. I use 1x2's for crossbeams & run string down from that to the plant. Works like a charm for me.

There are many other ways & you could certainly spend much more money. Just how much do you want to spend on tomatoes?

Good Luck,
Gumby_CT

Thanks so much for your reply! I was going to use electrical conduit as that's what I used before, but I'm open to other ideas. I'm looking for cheap ideas, but also very sturdy and will work for at least a few years. If I can take it down over the winter, that's good too! HOA's and all that stuff! Love the pics of your "mini farm"! Some day, some day....

Have you bolted your beds down in any way? I'm afraid that my boxes will be picked up and turned over in the neighbors yard! They are cedar and made out of 1 x 6's if that helps any.

I rely on gravity to keep my beds in place. Been good to me so far. Can't see taking up planting space, if I don't need to. Plus when I set it up I wasn't sure about spacing.

They might move a little - but they haven't yet left the garden.

I think you can probably do fine with electrical conduit as well, between the wind and the fact that you are using an area with pre-loosened soil (former flower bed) I would consider getting re-bar twice as long as Mel recommends and pounding it half way into the ground, as usual. I suppose that, once you have lots of leafy stems up the trellis the conduit might bend in high winds, but winds that strong would probably break 1x1 wood, so if you go that route I would recommend at least 2x2

I should have read more carefully. I doubt you will have to worry about the beds themselves. Those big trampolines are large and top-heavy, with legs that allow the wind to get underneath, the whole thing acts like a sail. As long as your beds are on the ground, with no way for wind to get under them, and filled with soil, I doubt that they will blow anywhere. If you first tack landscape cloth to the bottom, and then fill them it will be doubly hard for the wind to do anything to them. In that same vein, I would say to definitely stick with the re-bar and conduit solution and not attach the trellises to the boxes, as the trellises are the only thing likely to act enough like a sail to put severe force on the box itself.

What we did was to pound 2 pieces of rebar about 2 feet into the ground and slip the conduit trellis over the rebar. Then we secured that to the bed with clamps (those u-shaped ones).

If you're going to dismantle the trellis over the winter (I don't) just make sure to spray paint the top foot or so of that rebar with some brightly colored paint. There's nothing like "accidentally" finding that rebar during the winter, when it's covered in snow.

Thanks so much everyone for sharing your experiences! The flower beds are untouched clay! Its a 2 yr old house and nothing has ever been planted in the beds. Weeds are growing like crazy though! Huge 2 foot diameter weeds that we've been clearing out!

We are nailing weed cloth (the 20 yr kind) to the bottom in over lapping layers and we'll lay it down between the beds as well for walkways to get to the trellises. If I do the rebar, they'll be back along the house with the boxes in front of them basically. There is little risk of tripping on them. The rebar sounds appealing as its pretty cheap.

Can rebar be bent? I'm wondering if I could use it as a stake to secure the front of the beds to the ground and secure the back with the hardware to drill onto the beds? Or maybe it would be better to not drill them on to the beds so there is no way they could be ripped out of the wood box if the trellis did go down in a wind storm. Hmmm, the rebar would look pretty unsightly in the front though wouldn't it! Maybe I'll go walk around and see if there are more attractive and cheap options!

I am beginning to wonder if roots of the plants held my trellis down? And the trellis held the beds in place? Ya think?

The wonderful thing about gardening, you can spend just as much as you have, ha!

LOL Gumby!

I suppose you could build the beds out of cinder blocks instead of wood. Maybe a bag or two of cement to fill every third hole for added measure? Alas - that could be expensive.

I think that you'll be pleasantly surprised at how well your wooden boxes and conduit trellis will hold up in the wind, unless we're talking F1 Hurricane winds.