Cages. Size of cages depends on the variety. I use CRW cages. Check out Bingsters pics here of his container support system not to mention all the pics Raybo has posted of his EarthTainer system and the cages he builds for them. He has posted detailed instructions here numerous times. And if you search 'cage or stake' here you'll find 100's of pics posted of various support systems on this forum and on the Container gardening forum. Dave

The short description by cat mom is accurate. To generalize this: A series of rods sticking out of the wall go into holes perfectly aligned to receive them. 1./ Any metal rod sticking out of the wall, made any way. 2./ Any very well aligned hole in your chosen shelf material Here is an example from five years ago. Jackww had metal rods welded onto a flat bar. Then he bolted the flat bar into the wall. This is one way to get bolts into the wall studs. Probably he grooved out the backside of the shelf so that the flat bar would be hidden. His shelves were massively heavy oak used normally as countertop material. See http://www.ikeafans.com/galleries/index.php?n=803 and http://www.ikeafans.com/forums/yes-s-ikea/5498-masterpiece-abstrakt-white.html The strongest method is Metal rods. Other methods work too. They all involve attaching something to the wall which then gets covered by the shelf after the shelf gets slid over it or onto it. This is why most floating shelves are thick. In the Ikea web site and in Ikea stores, see Lack and Besta floating shelves. There are others too. Here is a link that might be useful: LACK floating shelf for $15 at Ikea

Positano, I have the same setup as you - 36" uppers that came with 3 shelves, so including the bottom, that's four openings. I've been using them the way the carpenter put them in, which gives me good size spaces for the first two openings, a smaller space for the third, and even less for the fourth. (Wish I could have gotten the 42" uppers - that would have made the fourth opening more usable.) It's still pretty good, though - as you go up, it's harder to reach to store things, so it's good not to stack them too high. I've been putting less-used items like serving bowls, pie dishes, trays, etc. up there. Talley_Sue, a user here who was kind enough to invite me to her home early on in my planning process to see what she had done with her kitchen, liked to have her shelves spaced closely together. She felt that stacking unlike items together because the shelves were too high was inefficient. Her kitchen was a model of efficient use of space! She should have been a systems analyst, that one! ;-)

I have the same set up and my contractor installed two heavy-duty steel L-shaped brackets. One end of the L is hidden beneath the drywall (attached to a stud) and the other is underneath the counter, so it's invisible. I didn't want legs or corbels as they would interfere with the limited seating area. We just made sure that the brackets were strong enough to support the weight (estimated 150 - 200 lbs.).