Viney Vegetable Support

In my vegetable garden I am following the Square Foot Gardening method. SFG calls this structure a tomato tower. You can buy a tomato tower on their website, but let me tell you how I made it. (Click on the photo to see the details more easily.)

When we moved into our home 5 1/2 years ago, we discovered all sorts of leftover building materials had been thrown under the deck, including a set of tent poles. I used these 3/4" aluminum poles for this vegetable support. I cut them to about seven feet tall using a sawz-all. I also cut 4-ft long pieces to go across the top, making the whole thing 12 feet long. You could use 3/4" electrical conduit, which is not too expensive at hardware stores. I connected the end legs to the top with 3/4" electrical conduit couplers and rounded elbows. The interior legs were tricky. SFG uses two elbows at each intersection, but I wanted mine to look cleaner. I bought brass plumbing T's and pounded the poles in. The T's are threaded, so the poles don't fit super well, but the rest of the structure keeps it tight enough. You may be able to find threaded pipe that would work great with these T's.

To secure the legs in the ground, I drove 3-ft long rebar 18" into the ground right behind the grow box. I slipped the poles over the rebar and drove them into the ground about one foot, so the structure stands six feet high.

I ordered nylon netting with a seven-inch grid from the SFG store. It's $0.50 per linear foot, 4 feet wide. I've had this netting on an old structure outside for two years and it shows little sign of wear. It is very strong but soft enough to not cut into plants. I tied three pieces of the netting to the top and sides of the structure. As the vegetables grow, I can train them up the netting and easily reach through the holes to harvest. SFG claims that each 4-ft section of tomato tower will support over 100 lbs. of plant. I hope so!

I've planted eight climbing vegetables along this support: three types of vine tomatoes, a butternut squash, a melon, two cucumber plants, and a pumpkin plant. In the past I've grown tomatoes on a similar structure. Growing vegetables vertically saves space on the ground and keeps the fruit off the ground where it can get rotted. It is much easier to tend and harvest vertical plants than bending and reaching across the ground. I've left a two-foot-wide walkway behind this structure so I can harvest the plants from in front and behind. The first time I built one of these was kind of an experimental model. I put it right up against my fence and found it was very difficult to reach from the sides of the box to harvest in the middle of the net, not to mention pulling the vine out of the net at the end of the season.

I'll keep you posted on how the vegetables grow and if I run into problems with the structure. My biggest concern is that a strong wind will come when it is full of plants and knock the whole thing down. We'll see!