What to use for vine-y plants: trellis, sticks, fence?

[PenelopeJune]

What do you use for your various plants with vines (peas, beans, tomatoes, etc)? Pictures would be lovely if you have them!

Last year we scavenged sticks out of the yard for the beans, and I guess it worked okay but they weren't really long enough. We used the typical cheapo tomato cages and most of them are broken after one year so I'd like to go a different route.

Thanks for the ideas!

[DuckDuckGoose]

Last year I used a metal 3 part trellis for my cukes and LOVED it! I will never grow cukes on the ground again. And also last year I used tall wood sticks and deer netting for my peas and HATED it. I couldn't weed very well and the net was saggy. This year I am investing in some green metal signposts and wire to make a more permanent solution/fence around the perimeter of my garden. And I did bush beans last year but didn't love the way they grew all over the place, so this year we are trying a bean teepee with blue lake and purple beans. And for my tomatoes, I use cages but I found some at WalMart a few years ago that were labeled for some type of flowering bush (can't remember) but they are super thick, as in you can't bend them. All the other cages I had fell over.

[two raising two]

last year i planted my peas on the north-west side of the garden fence. this way they won't shade your other plants as they grow up the fence. i need the fence around my garden to keep the chickens out, and i think the peas look pretty growing up the fence. 

[Owen'nZoe]

I have 3 different solutions that i use:

- For tomatoes, I do a Florida Weave. I've tried many different methods of trellising tomatoes, and this is by far my favorite. If you google "Tomatoes Florida Weave" you'll get tons of hits, including pictures and instructions.

- For peas and cukes, I have a 7 foot high trellis on the north side of each of my raised beds. The trellis is made of 2" x 2" x8' cedar boards. My beds are each 8' long. I took 3 of the 2 x 2's and sunk them a foot into the ground along the north edge of the bed. I then screwed them into the bed. I took a fourth 2 by 2 and laid it over the top of the 3 posts, and screwed it in to form a trellis. I hang a mesh trellis from this structure each year. It works great!

- For beans, I made a bamboo bean teepee for the kids. This is my least favorite of the trellises, because the teepee is constantly coming undone, but the kids love it and request it ever year.

[mindymom]

For peas I use chicken wire hooked on U-bend fence posts; sometimes I have to stack two for really tall vines.  (But I'm more careful about what kind of peas I order now! )  The downside is if you do it this way you have to be able to stand on either side of the fence to pick the peas, as it is difficult to fish the pods through the chicken wire.  I have also tried tying twine into nets with 4" openings like the commercially sold pea nets, but at least for the particular type of pea I grew that year that spacing seemed too large and the vines needed a lot of "help" to keep from falling over.  I've thought about using chicken wire strips or chicken wire panels with holes cut out for reaching through, but I've never gotten around to trying it.

I have not found anything a cucumber won't grow up, but they seem to particularly like chain link fencing, which is also sturdy enough to hold the melons up without sagging.

I have tried square and round cages for my tomatoes, as well as wood and metal and plastic stakes.  I haven't liked anything so far.  My husband's aunt is an excellent gardener and swears by mulching with straw and letting them grow on the ground, but she has a lot more space than I do.  My sister uses wire fencing with 4" openings tied in a cylinder about 2' across and 3.5' tall.  She lets the vines grow as much as they want in there and cuts them if they grow out of it, and gets lots and lots of tomatoes buried inside lush little bushes, but she has a lot more sun and wind than I do - I think in my yard they would probably be prone to fungal problems and the interior leaves would waste away if I tried this method.  The quest goes on...

I tried bamboo teepees last year for my lima and pole beans and didn't have trouble with them falling over (okay, I had DH the boy scout, knot-fiend build them), but I still wasn't crazy about them.  I think it was partly the varieties that I was growing, which grew very tall and required teepees with wide bases - it was just a wildly inefficient use of garden space.  I also think I used bamboo poles that were a bit too stout, which caused the string beans to fall down in some places, but they grew up the thinner bamboo poles very well, so maybe I'll build some bamboo trellises this year.

[SuburbanHippie]

For peas and beans we usually just do metal fencing.  I did some poles last year too, but the plants got to the top and then were reaching for the fencing still to go higher so this year I'm just going to do fencing.  I'm aiming for 6' tall this time. 

For tomatoes, I really like the look of stakes, it's very clean.  But I think it's easier to do tomato cages and it forces me not to put the plants too close.  The year I did stakes I put them way too close and they quickly drained the soil of calcium and we had blossom end rot.  We recovered, but it wasn't quick nor easy.  My old neighbors used metal fencing about 7' high.  Their tomatoes were amazing.