Vertical Gardening (plus How to Make a Bamboo Trellis)

A lot of conventional vegetable gardens are pretty 2-Dimensional affairs. We always try to grow our vegetable gardens in 3 Dimensions. Growing taller plants, such as this moringa, aibika and jute and chaya, lets us increase the yield of food from the same area by taking better advantage of vertical space. In addition, leaves that are harvested from taller plants are much less likely to be contaminated by soil pathogens splashed onto them by rain.

Even without growing such tall plants, you can make your vegetable garden more productive and more ecologically dynamic by using trellises to access that vertical space. Trellises are frames of any kind that provide support for a climbing or vining plant.

From the point of view of the plant, a trellis offers the opportunity to harvest sunlight above the crowd without the metabolic expense of building a stout trunk. Instead of diverting resources to building its own physical support, the climbing plant can simply attach itself to a trellis and invest more heavily in foliage, roots, and reproduction.

From the gardener’s perspective, using trellises and climbing plants can produce up to 3 times greater yield from the same area of garden. This allows the gardener to focus her labor and other resources, such as compost and water, on a smaller area; while at the same time harvesting sunshine over a greater area. And, when you get down to it, vegetable gardening is basically just collecting solar energy and converting it into foods that we like to eat.

Most of the edible leaf vegetables that thrive on trellises are members of the legume or bean family or the pumpkin family. Most of them are multi-use plants with edible fruit as well as leaves. Some of our favorite climbing legumes are; butterfly peas, rice beans, winged beans, scarlet runner beans, and yard long beans. They all are great climbers and beautiful plants that have nutritious leaves and seeds. As a bonus, they also can all convert or fix nitrogen in the air into a form that plants can use.

Among the pumpkin family climbers we like Seminole pumpkins, chayote, bitter gourd, luffa and tromboncino. All of these have edible leaves and immature fruit that can be eaten like zucchini.

Outside of the bean and pumpkin families, two climbing plants that stand out their high nutrition leaves are Malabar spinach and grapes. Growing grapes for fresh fruit, raisins or wine involves a lot of pruning off leaves that are one of our very richest sources of vitamin A.

As with tall plants, leaves harvested from trellises are much less likely to be contaminated by soil pathogens splashed onto them by rain. Trellises also offer convenient perches which attract song birds to serenade the gardener and help control insect pests. Trellises can also provide partial shade, extending the season for lower growing cool weather plants, like lettuce or spinach. Larger trellises can create shady spots in your garden to relax or maybe even take a nap in a hammock.

There are hundreds of variations on garden trellises. One of the simplest, cheapest and most functional is this bamboo tee-pee model.

Build a Bamboo Trellis:

Lay out 7 bamboo poles with their bases even
Cut them off at 9 or 10 feet
Tie them together 7 or 8 feet from their base with nylon twine
Make a round bed roughly 5 feet in diameter. We’ve used a leaking kiddie pool here as a container, in order to reduce nematode problems. A donut shaped bed works well directly on the ground.
Spread the bamboo poles evenly around this bed, pushing the bamboo into the soil to stabilize the teepee. Starting holes for the bamboo with a steel bar is helpful, especially in hard soil.
Cut short pieces of bamboo and tie them horizontally to the trellis. Fourteen guage (#14) wire works well for this.
Set out your climbing plants. Here we’ve transplanted Seminole pumpkins and Malabar spinach.
A 5-gallon bucket with small holes drilled near the bottom can be set into the center of the trellis to make watering easier. Digging a hole two feet across and two feet deep and filling it with organic mulch serves the same purpose. The mulch can offer a steady supply of moisture, as well as some nutrients as it breaks down. It will also reduce competition from weeds.

I hope this short presentation encourages you to raise your vegetable garden into the air up there.

Thanks for watching.

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