Making a simple cucumber trellis for your garden is a great way to grow healthy plants in less space.
Cucumbers are a great plant to add to any garden! You can grow them just about anywhere: a traditional garden row, raised beds, pots on the porch, or even 5 gallon buckets. I have a good friend that grows them in hanging baskets on her front porch. During the summer when she needs a cucumber she just walks out on the front door and picks one!
Everyone in our family enjoys cucumbers, so we grow them each year. The first few years we planted them in a traditional garden row. But as we added more kids to our family and more cucumber plants to our garden, the cucumber vines got a little out of control! The cucumber vines would really spread out and take up a lot of valuable garden space. Some of the cucumber vines even took over their neighboring plants.
To save space in the garden and to keep the vine better contained we started growing our cucumber vines up instead of out.
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Using Cattle Panels As A Trellis
We have two raised beds that are 16 feet long. They run parallel to each other with about 3 feet in between them. The raised beds are connected by cattle panels that are 16 feet long. The cattle panels make an arch (Mark calls this the tunnel of love). We use the cattle panels as supports for some of our garden plants like cucumber and tomatoes.
We plant cucumbers at the base of the cattle panels. As the cucumber plants begin to vine out we train the vines to grow up the cattle panel instead of across the raised bed. You can easily train the cucumber vines to grow up the cattle panel by gently weaving the vines in and out of the cattle panel. The little vines will grab hold and wrap around the cattle panel.
Cattle Panels – Pros
- Cattle panels are very durable and strong.
- They are made to use outside so it takes a long time for the weather to ruin them.
- The newer cattle panels are lighter weight and easy to bend.
- Cattle panels are usually pretty easy to find at farm supply stores.
Cattle Panels – Cons
- Cattle panels are not super expensive, but they’re not cheap either. Just remember they are very durable so you’ll most likely get your money’s worth out of them.
Using Fencing As A Cucumber Trellis
If you have a fence in your yard or garden, you can probably train your cucumber plants to grow up the fence. This could be a great option if you don’t have the time or desire to build your own cucumber trellis.
Just plant your cucumber in front of the fence. As the cucumber plant grows, you can begin training it to grow up the fence.
Fence – Pros
- The fence is already there. No need to build or buy a trellis!
Fence – Cons
- At the end of the growing season when your cucumber plant is no longer producing and begins to die, you’ll have to clean the vines off of your fence. You really need to clean the vines off of any trellis you use, but you may especially want to keep your fence looking tidy.
Building A Cucumber Trellis With Wood And String
You can easily build your own cucumber trellis with wood and string. With these simple and inexpensive materials you can have a cucumber trellis ready in no time.
Materials For Building A Simple Cucumber Trellis
- 2 wooden posts about 5 feet tall
- 2 wooden posts to connect the taller posts (the one for the bottom is 2 feet long, and the one for the top is about 4 feet long). — these measurements may vary depending on how wide you want your trellis.
- String
Directions For Building A Simple Cucumber Trellis
If you are building your trellis on the ground, you will either need to dig a hole and bury the upright pieces in the ground to provide the support needed for your cucumber plants. Or you could build a quick base to provide the needed support.
We are building and attaching our trellis to a small raised bed that’s just big enough for a couple of cucumber plants.
If you’re interested in building some raised beds, you can check out our simple DIY raised beds.
The raised bed we’re using for this cucumber trellis is only 2 feet long and 1 foot wide.
Take the 2 taller pieces of lumber and screw them into your raised bed.
Screw the shorter piece up top, connecting the two upright pieces. The piece we are using across the top is longer than the space between the two upright sides. This will add just a little more room for the cucumber plant to grow.
Screw the bottom connecting board in between the two upright pieces. The bottom and the top pieces are necessary for tying your string. The string is what your plant will attach itself to.
Next, it’s time to add the string. We started by running the string vertically from the top piece to the bottom.
Then we added string horizontally from side to side. We laced the horizontal strings through the vertical strings to provide a little more strength for the future cucumber plants.
Our finished product is not going to win any beauty contests, but it will get the job done!
Wood and String – Pros
- Inexpensive. If you don’t already have these materials at home, it won’t cost much to get them.
- Strong enough to support a growing cucumber plant.
- Quick to make.
- You can custom make this cucumber trellis for any space you have.
Wood and String – Cons
- The string may not last for very long and need to be replaced at the beginning of each growing season.
Peter Rabbit Strikes Again
I was really hoping to get pictures of our small cucumber plants starting to crawl up this new trellis, but apparently Peter Rabbit paid our little garden a visit. So we picked up Leroy, the owl, to help out with garden security. Hopefully he can keep Peter Rabbit away.
