Growing Vertically - How to Build a Vertical Trellis for Your Square Foot Garden

Growing Vertically,

I just love my vertical trellises.   Once again I followed Mel’s instructions, and I am here to tell you that so far they are working great.  And they were so easy to build.   It is still early in the season, but they seem to be sturdy enough.   We made one modification to his plan.   Instead of tying all the little ties on each square of the nylon vegetable trellis to the frame, we purchased zip ties and used them to attach the nylon trellis to the conduit frame.   I have to admit this was my husband’s idea and at first I was a little skeptical, but indeed it was an excellent idea!   I did not relish tying each little square on the nylon trellis to the frame.   I believe this idea may also make it easier to take down at the end of the growing season.  I am hoping that the nylon trellises are sturdy enough to reuse next year.  

Look closely and you can see the rebar at
the corner of the raised bed. 

Conduit Trellis Frame

How we made our vertical trellises:  

Materials needed for one trellis:

2 - 6 ft lengths of electrical conduit

1 – 4 ft length of electrical conduit

2 – L - shaped conduit connectors

2- 4 ft length of rebar (Mel recommends 18 – 24 inches.  I may try the shorter length in the future.)

1 – nylon vegetable trellis

I purchased all the materials at a local home and garden center.  The conduit came in 10 foot lengths, but the garden center cut it for me into the lengths that I needed. 

To construct the vertical trellis I began by attaching one of the connectors to each end of the four foot conduit.   In order to position the rebar supports in the right place, I laid the four foot piece of conduit on the ground where I wanted my trellis and then using a hammer I drove the rebar into the ground about 1 – 1 ½ feet deep.   Next I slid one six foot length of conduit onto each rebar.  To complete the conduit frame I simply connected the four foot length of rebar to the top of the six foot lengths.   The connectors that I purchased had screws that I easily tightened to secure the two pieces of conduit to each other.   The final step was to hang the nylon vegetable trellis to the frame.   My trellis was bigger than my frame so I had to trim it to fit.  As you can see from the pictures, so far it is working great.

I still need to build a few more, but this project took less than 30 minutes to build.