We made a garden trellis with PVC piping

May 2nd, 2010 admin Posted in Experiences, Information, Tutorials | 3 Comments »

Figure1: Basic plan showing the material required

We have two 4′x8′ (4 feet by 8 feet) raised beds, which we use for vegetable plants. Kavita has been asking me to either buy or build a trellis for her climbing plants (cucumbers, tomatoes and eventually some types of squash and gourds). I read several websites online and decided to build a simple trellis using PVC piping. It took one trip to the local Home Depot, and then about 2 hours of work. The cost for the material was under $10 (I already had all the tools needed).

We decided to build one and test it out before getting carried away and building more. We decided that we would roughly want the trellis to be 4 feet wide by 5 feet high. At the Home Depot we did some quick calculations based on the basic design we had in mind and came up with a total of about 29 feet of PVC tube. The calculation is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 2: Materials and Tools for the project (4-way, + shaped, PVC connector missing)

The PVC pipes are sold in 10′ pieces. We got 3 pieces. We also got some string (I tried polypropylene string since I did not know any better, we’ll see how that works out).

Figure 2 shows most of the material and tools. The one caveat is, since I took this picture after completing the project, the one 4-way 1/2″ PVC pipe connector used at the center of the frame is missing from the picture. I had extra connectors of the other type, so I could use them for the picture. Also, one other thing that is missing from the picture is a power drill and drill bits. I used a 3/16″ drill bit to drill evenly spaced holes in the pipes to draw the string through, to create a framework.

Figure 3: Trellis plan with the stringing shown

Figure 4: Framework ready, stringing is yet to be completed

The spacing between the holes and how the trellis is supposed to look eventually is shown in Figure 3.

The thing that took the most time was measuring and marking the PVC pipes, cutting them to the right size with the saw, then measuring and marking the locations for the holes for the string to go through and then drilling the holes with the power drill. Since the PVC pipe keeps rolling about, making it stable before drilling is important. I just used an old rag to wrap around the pipe in order to hold it somewhat still.

Once the pieces were all ready, putting the trellis together took less than 10 minutes. There was no need for glue, since the connectors fit quite snugly. Figure 4 shows the trellis laid out on the lawn (with only one piece of string drawn through, Kavita will work on getting the rest of the mesh this evening).

We are not sure how well this will hold up, how long it will last etc. I will update the post with some pictures on the trellis in action, later.