DIY Cucumber Trellis

I've turned into the woman standing at the edge of her garden willing her plants to grow. We've had quite the dry spell, and our hose is not hooked up yet, so Joel and I have been toting buckets of water out every other day or so. 

I'm a gardening beginner. I don't know a whole lot about growing vegetables, but I'm giving it a try! In doing some online research, I found that having a trellis for your cucumbers is important because it keeps them fresh, clean and disease free. Along with my research, I looked for trellis options I could buy and trellis options I could make. I opted to make my own by repurposing an object commonly found at yard sales and auctions.

What do you see when you look at this picture?

I bet you said an old baby crib, right? Yep, you got it. But I saw much more than that! I saw: a trellis (2 barred sides of crib), two signs (2 solid sides of crib) and a light fixture (mattress spring). I was SO thrilled with this find at a local yard sale for just $10! And the best part, minimal assembly was required to create my cucumber trellis out of the barred sides of the crib.

After finding my material and gathering the supplies I needed, I accomplished this project in two easy steps!

What You'll Need: 

• 2 Barred Sides of Baby Crib
• 4 Zip Ties
• Garbage Bag 
• Shovel

Step 1: Prop the sides of the crib up against each other and zip tie them together through the holes that already exist for assembly purposes (if you were using this like a normal person would).

Step 2:  If your sides are wooden, I'd recommend wrapping a piece of garbage bag around the bottom to help prevent rot. Once that's done, figure out how wide you want your trellis to stand, dig into the dirt a few inches and bury the garbage bag wrapped bottom of the sides for stability.   

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That's it! You now have a cucumber trellis, or flower trellis, or whatever kind of trellis you want it to be.

Here's what it looked like in our garden at the beginning of the season in May:

Here's what it looked like in July, just after the cucumbers really started to take off: