How does your garden grow? With diamond-mesh and square-mesh trellis

It's been just over a month since I "planted" the last of my trellises. I was out weeding today and decided to show you that the trellises are no longer empty.

The beans have completely taken over this trellis.  In a couple of cases the vines reached the top, went over, and started growing down the other side.



















While not all the vine plants are taking over the trellis at the rate the beans are, they are attaching and climbing up.















And it does not seem to matter whether the mesh is square or diamond shaped.

Rectangles in Square-Mesh Netting

For the past several weeks I've been working with square mesh netting. Several of the trellises I made were with square meshes rather than diamond meshes. By the time I had finished those trellises, I had the directions for making a square of square-mesh netting written and well tested. This week I have been working with square-mesh netting again - but with rectangles instead of squares. I made four different samples.

Two had an even number of squares across the width.

 

Two had an odd number of squares across the width.

I also made sure that the samples included two with an even number of squares along the length and two with an odd number of squares. I carefully wrote down the directions, for both the width and the length, noting the changes that occurred when an even or odd number of squares was wanted. I thought I had the directions figured out and accurately put into the computer.

I guess it was a good thing I looked at my garden yesterday and noticed that the tomato plants at one end of one garden box were starting to sprawl all over the place. The poor tomato plants were in need of a trellis of their own - the one spot in the garden where I had not already supplied one!

We picked up the materials to make the frame, and last night I found some unused seine twine Mason Line to use for the netting. As I was netting the trellis, I found a mistake in the instructions that I thought were all finished and correct. I guess it pays to check and double check the instructions.








And this morning, with the help of my youngest son, we threaded the netting onto the frame.

















The tomato plants are no longer sprawling; they are climbing instead. I even saw a few small, green tomatoes.

Net Trellises in the Garden

Back in 2007 our family tried a new approach to gardening - a couple of Square-Foot-Garden boxes. At that time I made some 4 foot by 6 foot net trellises to match the larger frame shape and some 4 foot by 4 foot ones for the smaller frame shape.

This year we had more plants that wanted to climb than we had squares in which to put them. We decided to try the frames without the Square-Foot boxes. A couple of weeks ago we bought the supplies, set up the frames (5 feet by 5 feet), and planted the seeds. My goal was to get the six net trellises made before the plants needed them.

It turned out to be an opportunity for me to practice making squares of square-mesh netting in preparation for my upcoming class, "Netting, More or Less," where I will be teaching about square-mesh netting. It took me three trellises to get the written instructions to match what I was actually doing.

That left me with three more to finish, and I was beginning to get bored with repeating the same pattern over and over. I started thinking, "What would happen if . . .

To find out what I was thinking of experimenting with and how the final net trellises turned out, come join us in Rita's Netting Nook.

Net Garden Trellis

Earlier this spring our family decided to try a new garden idea - a Square Foot Garden. Part of the Square Foot Garden concept was a 6 foot by 4 foot trellis to let plants grow upward instead of along the ground. Since I had some extra bonded cord, I decided to make my own net instead of buying it at the local gardening store. This week the plants had actually grown big enough to start using the netting.























It was rather exciting to see the beans, cucumbers and tomatoes start to climb up. Tonight I made an additional net to go on a smaller 4 foot by 4 foot metal frame behind the beans and cucumbers. There are a couple of tomato plants at that end of the box that could use some extra support.

I discovered I needed to change the directions slightly when making these square mesh rectangles from what I had on my website. These had an even number of meshes both across and down. The sample on my website had an even number across and an odd number of meshes going down.