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Living trellises.

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posted 16 years ago

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I'm interested in planting my own trellises. I've read that corn makes a great trellis for legumes and smaller curcubitas such as cucumbers. However it apparently doesn't do well with tomatoes. Has anyone used tall, stalky plants to form trellises? I've also seen sunflowers tied together like a tepee used as a trellis.

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Jeremiah Bailey
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Leah Sattler

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posted 16 years ago

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I tried the three sisters once. I didn't think it worked out so well. I have all but given up on growing corn because of the corn worms. I can see where sunflowers would have great potential for something like that! and they are trouble free......at least for me in this area.

I have heard of growing pumpkins and grapes into your fruit trees.

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Joel Hollingsworth

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posted 16 years ago

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A local garden I've volunteered for uses sunflower in a modified 3 sisters, and it works great. I've also seen lots of climbing vines on palm tree trunks.

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Brenda Groth

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posted 16 years ago

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living trellises wokr OK..but i find that more sturdy platns work best for them..like trees and shrubs..rather than tender plants..

i live in an area of a lot of natural woods..and the trees and shrubs support a large number of vines..some of the trees are dead but most are alive..there are clematis, grapes, nightshade, woodbine, and bittersweet growing up lots of the trees along the roads i walk on daily..and there are vines growing up my trees too, including those and ivy.

i honestly find my best trellises are lattice and wooden fences..which will be there permanently for your annuals or perennials..also tomatoes can be made to hold each other up if they are woven back and forth..we did that this year..weaving the taller climbers through each other..but i still think they do better if they are tied to one tall stake..

I have also read that there are problems with tomato blight some areas this year....but mine have not one single blemish on them anywhere..they are the most perfect tomatoes i have ever grown....they are completely inside of a greenhouse

Brenda

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Jeremy Stocks

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posted 16 years ago

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On our rented plot this summer I planted a bed for the children to look at with flowers. I also tried 3 sisters too. Here's my experiences:

I planted a bed with sunflowers and sweet peas, with calendula at the bottom. It was successful but only because the stalks of the sunflower were very strong - almost an inch thick as it is quite an exposed site. I used variety "King Kong" seed - hope you can get that in the US. What was lovely was that the nitrogen fixing sweet peas grew into the thicket beautifully and weaved in and out, and they smelled lovely. So you may want to try that idea.

The 3 sisters I have tried before but it all ends up 1 sister!. The corn didnt grow very well, the weeds grew in between, and the pumpkin never got to any size. So I reckon a sunflower stalk in the middle is the way to go, but only if it'sa thick stalked variety.

Brenda Groth

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posted 16 years ago

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da## coons ate my corn as it was just startijng to tassel out ! squash doing fine..beans are done and i just today canned the last of them and pulled up the vines.

Brenda

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http://restfultrailsfoodforestgarden.blogspot.com/

jeremiah bailey

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posted 16 years ago

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Thanks everybody. I think I might pick a rather stout stemmed sunflower to try it out next year. I don't know if I'll do corn again, as we get very superb corn locally grown all season at the markets. While there is more than corn here in Indiana, the corn sure is damned good! I'm still undecided there.

If the sunflower is not stout enough alone as a trellis, then I could supplement it with stakes, but fewer and thinner than I'd otherwise need.

"Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it." - Helen Keller
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Jeremiah Bailey
Central Indiana

Brenda Groth

pollinator

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posted 16 years ago

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here sunflowers won't work for trellises as we get this monstrous mutiple heads on our sunflowers here..and they then tend to fall over on their own weight..but they might work in Indiana..

i was shocked at the multiple heads we have had the past 7 years on our sunflowers..i mean like as many as 50 and 60 on some at least 7 or 8 on most.

Brenda

Bloom where you are planted.
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Joel Hollingsworth

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posted 16 years ago

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60 heads?

That goes beyond Marvel Comics territory and starts encroaching on old mythologies...

I bet a pyramid or tepee arrangement would help them not to fall over, and might even be stable enough to allow for trellising in addition.

The work I've seen has been with a tripod of relatively slender-stalked sunflowers.

jeremiah bailey

Posts: 343

posted 16 years ago

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There are different varieties of sunflower, some of which are multi-headed. They're called floribundas if I recall correctly. I think those might be the ones you're growing Brenda. The ones I grow are single headed, although I hear that if you cut the flower head off at a certain time, it will cause the stalk to send off several replacement heads. I planted mine late in the season, so they're rather small this year. Next year I plan on hunting down a variety that has thick stalks and grows 7-8 ft, plus. The design I'm thinking of would be like a garden arbor, but framed with sunflowers, and maybe a stake or two to help support. The sunflowers would be in two rows, about 4 ft apart. 4 or 5 sunflowers from each row opposing each other would be trained to cross in a point like a tepee. Each end of the row would be open, so you could potentially walk through the arrangement for picking veggies, as the sunflowers mature.

Another idea I have is utilizing a living willow hut for a trellis. You could plant your veggies around the perimeter, and train them up the hut. I think that might work better for heavier vines like squash or other heavy vining plants. I think it'd be great to see a living hut covered in pumpkins.

Brenda, I'm kind of intrigued by your tomato weaving technique. How do you do that?

"Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it." - Helen Keller
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Jeremiah Bailey
Central Indiana

Leah Sattler

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posted 16 years ago

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as a child we had a large arbor over the patio. as I recall the lower parts of the vines were had very little foliage. it could easily done double duty as a place to grow smaller annual climbing vines.

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Nancy Reading

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posted 3 weeks ago

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I tried growing peas up my fava beans this year. They just seemed to migrate beyond the beans and lay down with the wind. I'd love to do away with pea sticks!

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Anne Miller

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posted 3 weeks ago

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Grape vines or bamboo might make good trellis plants.

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William Bronson

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posted 3 weeks ago

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The most interesting living trellis I heard of is pigeon peas for tomatoes.
They are a perennial nitrogen fixer that makes food.
They are also the reason I have a Siberian peashrub, since pigeon peas can't overwinter here.

I wish the peashrub propagated itself, by seed, but it doesn't seem to want to.
I'm plant on taking cuttings and maybe even air layering, some branches, since I always miss the ripe beans(birds maybe?)

I have also started taking long elderberry branches, stripping them of all but one leaf, and using them as stakes.
Im hoping these long cutting take and I'm hoping one year of root growth won't overwhelm the bed.

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Nancy Reading

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posted 3 weeks ago

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William Bronson wrote: I have also started taking long elderberry branches, stripping them of all but one leaf, and using them as stakes.
Im hoping these long cutting take and I'm hoping one year of root growth won't overwhelm the bed.

That's an interesting idea William! I like the idea of function stacking - that the cutting will be useful while it is rooting. I do find here that elder takes better if it has less grass competition, although sometimes it will root in grass, it is more likely to in a garden bed (and easy enough to transplant). I take fairly short cuttings though due to the wind loading, but it may well be worth a try, I still don't have enough elderberry bushes...

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William Bronson

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posted 3 weeks ago

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I was already intrigued with elder as a green manure, because it likes being cut back.
Turns out the leaves strip very easily.
That is also a feature of Catalpa trees.
The Catalpa hosts a particular insect Ceratomia catalpae, the catalpa sphinx.
Apparently this Catalpa worm often eats most of the foliage from a given tree, but this doesn't seem to bother the tree.

I've taken to stripping the leaves from Catalpa seedlings in my landscape.
I drop the leaves under a favored plant .
They grow back readily.
I like to think I'm standing for the Catalpa worm, a creature I've never seen on any of the Catalpa around here.

The leaves are kinda stinky, which I think could be good.
The Catalpa ha few predators, and the compounds in the leaves maybe why.
Fresh Catalpa leaf manure might provide some scent confusion protection for the plant it is feeding.

I'm getting some sochan plants soon.
They might be good as a living trellis, but I think they actually form thickets/clumps.

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Jay Angler

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posted 3 weeks ago

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Nancy Reading wrote:I tried growing peas up my fava beans this year. They just seemed to migrate beyond the beans and lay down with the wind. I'd love to do away with pea sticks!

Happy peas can grow 5 ft tall in my ecosystem, so I can imagine fava stocks not being strong or tall enough.

I like the idea of sunflower, but it likes more warmth than my ecosystem reliably provides. I have heard in the prairies, the stocks will over-winter as snow fencing, but I don't know if they'd still be sturdy come spring pea growing period.

I find that bamboo is quite slippery. I expect some vines will climb it spontaneously, but I haven't found that it worked as well for peas as it does for beans. I can imagine peas liking grape vines, but my vine is such a ferocious leaf and shoot producers, I can't imagine peas out competing its own growth. Using pruned pieces of grape vine to make a quick trellis would seem more promising to me, but that's no longer 'living'.

Something that does overwinter here, are versions of "Kale" or "walking stick cabbage" as it's a biennial plant. If I was planning ahead, I could plant suitable tall growing kale plants in groups that could have pea seeds (which apparently really like being planted in groups of 3) in a pattern in between in the early spring. I suspect that the peas would still outgrow their kale supports, but not as quickly as the fava beans. This would stack function with your pollinators when the kale goes to bloom as we've got a number of pollinators that really like kale flowers.

Ultimately, I suspect peas would benefit from some sort of open shrub. Even if judicial pruning was required to keep it open, that seems like less work than having to set up trellising every year.

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William Bronson

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posted 3 weeks ago

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I've been putting nursery pots in between rows of in ground plants.
They serve as a "living" mulch,without the complications of root competition.

So far it's just been cuttings and rescued volunteers, but if you had indoor/outdoor plants like moringa , citrus or figs, the potted plants could start out every spring already tall enough to be a trellis.

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