Bean Trellis
Tips on Building a Bean Trellis
Building a bean trellis is important for growing large and productive bean plants in your home garden. This is an easy process that requires a little bit of time and some minor planning. There are several designs for types of bean trellises, and each has its own advantages and disadvantages.
The traditional way to design and build a working bean trellis usually involves using some tall sticks placed in the ground vertically. These can be made from sticks, bamboo rods or wood. One of these sticks is place on either side of the bean plant and then fashioned together at the top with rope or twine, forming a triangle. These can be very tall, sometimes more than 10 feet high. The trellis will have several of these triangular shaped structures, one for each bean plant. Often another stick of equal length is connected horizontally to the tops of all of the vertical sticks for support. That’s it. This standard bean trellis is now functional for growing beans. Simply allow each bean plant, which is planted in the center of each pair of vertical sticks, to grow upward onto the trellis.
This technique for growing beans is very effective and will produce a large yield of edible vegetables, but it does present a slight disadvantage with the location of beans themselves. With this type of trellis, the beans will grow mostly inside of the tepee structure. This means that in order to pick them for eating, you must first search around inside of the mass of leaves and locate each bean. This may result in missed beans.
Another common way to design a trellis for growing beans, the V-shaped trellis, makes it a lot easier to reach the beans for harvesting. It does require more materials to build than the traditional method, but it has more advantages as well. Four tall sticks are placed vertically at the corners of the vegetable bed. These are connected together at the top by horizontal sticks, essentially forming a square in the top. Then a stick attached to this top square is set on a 45 degree angle into the soil, directly next to the growing plants. As they grow, the bean plants will twist around the angled stick, making getting to all of the beans much easier come harvest time. More of the plant will also be exposed to sunlight, so the harvest may yield more beans from each plant. Another good advantage of this trellis is that the beans can continue to grow horizontally along the top square as well. This gives you more room for plants and will produce even more beans for you to collect.
Some important tips to remember when constructing your bean trellis are making sure that the structure is steady enough and large enough to support the amount of beans you wish to grow. The trellis must be able to withstand heavy winds and possible storms, so be sure to build it with sturdy wood and use nails or heavy string to secure it. Dig the poles or sticks deep into the ground at the base, and if necessary add some extra securing in the form of rocks or bricks to really hold it down. If the trellis falls during a storm, it can damage your plants and ruin all of your hard garden work. Also, given the right conditions, bean plants can grow rather tall. Be sure to design your trellis type to be both tall enough and wide enough to fully support all of the plants. You may choose to plant only a single row of beans or several rows, depending on your garden space.
Building a trellis to support your bean plants is a fun process that can reward your efforts many times over when the harvesting begins.