Koen wrote:
Hi,
I bought some vines to cover a wall on our house. Then I went shopping
for trellis at my local home improvement store (Lowe's , HomeDepot).
Unfortunately what they have is either very expensive and ornamental,
or some junk pieces of wood stapled together. Also tried a few
nurseries/garden stores, but their collection wasn't that great
either.
Any suggestions where I can go for a nice, simple trellis? Maybe I
should just build one myself?
Some replies mentioned grapes. See my
http://www.rossde.com/garden/garden_grapes.html for how I
handled two vines. Remember, grape vines loaded with fruit can be
quite heavy. Early this year, I had to get my son to help me
pound one of the steel fence posts into the ground in a new spot
about 2 feet from its old location; the weight of several crops of
grapes had loosened the post although 3 feet of it had previously
been pounded into the ground.
For two climbing roses in my back yard ('Peace' and 'Chrysler
Imperial'), I took advantage of the low slough wall just behind
them. I worked brass screw eyes into mortar joints or drilled
directly into the concrete blocks and used anchors to hold the
screw eyes. I use hemp twine to tie the rose canes to the top of
the wall. Some canes are flat to the top, and others arc up and
then down.
For a climbing rose in front ('Fourth of July'), I got permission
from my neighbor to put a screw eye in the eaves of their
one-story house. I have a hole just opposite in the stucco of my
own house, where I used an anchor to hold another screw eye. (By
the way, I keep using brass because it won't leave rust stains.)
I strung a thin wire rope between the two houses, looping it
through each screw eye and then securing it with wire clamps. The
climber here is still young, so I had to drop twine from the wire
to the canes. As the canes grow, I will tie them to the dropped
twine until they reach the wire. Then I will tie them to the
wire. The effect in a year or two will be a suspended arc of
foliage covered with roses, about 6 feet high in the center and 9
feet high at the ends.
I have a friend nearby who suspended a length of PVC pipe from his
eaves over his front porch, on loops of wire attached to screw
eyes (in his case, not brass). The pipe is about 2-3" below the
eaves. Along the front edge of the porch, there are decorative
posts from the ground to the eaves. He has a climbing rose
growing up a post and then tied along the PVC pipe. The effect is
a trim of roses just below the eaves.
Finally, I have a bed of star jasmine (Trachelospermum
jasminoides) at the side of my back yard, near the side yard where
we keep our trash bins. I created a free-standing trellis. I
bought two 6-foot lengths of slotted steel L-strips (called that
because the cross-section is an L) and two 5-foot lengths. I also
bought two 8-foot lengths of slotted steel straps and a 5-foot
length. And I bought a bunch of bolts, nuts, and lock washers. I
created a frame with the 6-foot lengths of L-strips for the
verticals and the 5-foot lengths for the horizontals. I used the
8-foot straps as bracing diagonals bolted to the 5-foot strap
which is a horizontal across the middle of the frame. After
setting the frame up, I used shorter lengths of L-strips to create
legs and feet towards the trash bins. Then I hung poultry mesh
from the frame. Other than the bolts, nuts, and lock washers,
everything I bought was galvanized to resist corrosion. I now
have a green wall separating my back yard from my side yard. In
the summer, it's a very fragrant wall.
If your house has eaves on the side where you are planting your
vines, you might try a combination of the above. For example,
suspend a length of PVC from your eaves. Fasten poultry mesh to
the PVC with a "free" length of PVC at the bottom ("free" meaning
not fastened to anything except the mesh) to provide a weight to
keep the mesh hanging straight. Train your vines to grow on the
mesh. You can even cut windows in the mesh, to align with windows
in the wall. When you start, leave enough slack in the vines so
that a wind moving the mesh won't tear the vines out of the
ground.
--
David E. Ross
Climate: California Mediterranean
Sunset Zone: 19 -- interior Santa Monica Mountains with some ocean
influence (USDA 10a)
Gardening pages at
http://www.rossde.com/garden/