Our newest crop of cucumbers growing.

I’m always searching for more space for my climbing plants. It’s just so perverse that so many of the plants I want to grow need climbing space that I don’t have available yet.

To speed things up, I decided to do one of my improvised trellises. Yes, I have to maintain my DIY Queen reputation, don’t I?

Anyway, I had a few cucumber seedlings that needed a permanent home, and rather than search for more poles to make a trellis, I decided to make use of a pair of light posts in the front garden. It’s a really good spot for growing vegetables because it gets sunlight throughout the day.

The posts are less than a metre apart, and very firmly grounded – which is more than I can say for several of my personal trellis efforts! – and I decided to stretch string between the two posts for the cucumber vines to attach themselves to. I did mention that string was my new best friend in making trellises these days, didn’t I?

Starting as low as possible, I tied one end of a ball of string to one post, stretched it across at a slightly inclined angle, and looped it around the opposite post, and kept repeating the stretch and loop process until I’d covered about 1.5 metres in height. In my experience, cucumber vines don’t grow that high, so that ought to be more than enough for them to grow on.

As I always mention when using string in a trellis, keep going backwards to pull the string taut so that it doesn’t sag and slip down when the plants are growing on it. You really don’t want a trellis to act like a pair of old socks that have lost their elasticity…

After setting that up and transplanting the cucumber seedlings, it was a matter of daily encouraging the tendrils to attach themselves to the string supports, and watering and fertilizing the plants until the flowers and fruits came along.

Oh yes – this trellis also makes a really attractive privacy screen!

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