Garden arches are beguiling structures. Curving over the pathway, from one bed to another, they create these wonderful lush green tunnels to transport you through the rows. Passing under the vine-covered frames provides a blessed bit of shade. When it’s harvest time, fruits dangling down inside the arch are prime for the picking.
Too often, vegetable gardens are all business but trellis arches are the perfect combination of beauty and practicality. Building them for your climbing fruits and vegetables is a smart way to massively expand your growing area – and bring a little wonder back into the garden too.
It’s easier than you think to transform a flat veggie plot into a multi-layered food oasis. All you’ll need are cattle panels, t-posts, and zip ties.
Why Cattle Panels?
Cattle panels are a type of rigid welded wire fence that’s commonly used in farming to create enclosures for large livestock. You can find them for sale at most farm supply and animal feed stores, relatively cheap.
One of its off-label uses is as a creative solution for trellising your fruits and veggies. Doubled over into an arch and held up with posts and ties, with cattle panels there’s no need to purchase a pricey kit or construct the frame from scratch. It’s quick to set up since it’s a lot less about building and more about simply assembling it all together.
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It looks great. Arbors made from cattle panel add height to the garden and create an attractive focal point. They are superb for marking the transition from lawn to garden or all in a line along the pathways. Once they are devoured by vines, you’ll barely notice the metal structure underneath.
It’s long lasting. Cattle panel is intended to pen in livestock so it’s made to stand up the elements. The 4-gauge wire is thick and heavy-duty, hot-dip galvanized to resist rust. Each welded line that makes up the mesh squares is zinc-coated at the crossings for added strength and durability.
It’s a sturdy support. Cattle panel can be used to trellis all sorts of clambering crops – pole beans, cucumbers, squash, melons, and peas are all great options. Although, you’ll want to add slings and hammocks to support larger fruits as they develop on the vine.
It protects your fruit (and your back). As the shoots twine up the wires, fruits hang down inside the tunnel and are shaded by the leaves. Not only does this make for easier harvesting since you don’t need to kneel or bend over, the foliage helps protect fruits from sunscald.
It’s not permanent. Although you don’t need to take the cattle panel arch down every fall, you could if you wanted to. It’s easy to disassemble and store over winter or move it around as the vision for your garden changes and grows.
It expands your growing area. From only 4 square feet of soil, cattle panels increase your growing area to an impressive 64 square feet!
Things You’ll Need to Set Up a Cattle Panel Arch Trellis:
- (1) 16’ Cattle Panel
- (4) 6’ t-posts
- Small sledgehammer or post driver
- Zip-ties or fine gauge wire
- Tape measure
Determine the garden arch position
Cattle panels measure 16 feet long and 4 feet wide. When curved into a standing arch, you’ll want to have roughly 6 feet of distance between each cattle panel end. This creates a sturdy frame and allows a little less than 7 feet of headroom when passing underneath the arch.
Of course, you’ve got to work with what you have – if your paths are narrower, you can space the base of the arch at a 4 or 5 foot distance for a taller and skinnier archway.
When working out your arch placement, take the width of your walking path and add 12 inches. You’ll need about 6 inches of growing area inside each opposing bed, so you can plant on the inside of the arch later.
Once you’ve calculated the arch position, mark the spots where you’ll be driving in the 4 t-posts that will hold the cattle panel in place. You’ll be adding two in each bed, about 3 feet apart.
Drive in the t-posts
After you’ve measured and marked the t-post positions, it’s time to pound them into the ground.
With the notches facing inside the arch, use a small sledgehammer or post driver to sink them at least 12 inches into the ground.
Wrangle the cattle panel into place
Moving the cattle panels around is definitely the most challenging part of this DIY. Cattle panel is somewhat heavy and awkward and it doesn’t really want to bend. Much, much easier to handle with two people but it can be done solo.
Start by lifting the cattle panel on its side and curving it into an arch shape. It’s easiest to stand in the center of the arch and squeeze it inward on each side. Then lift it up and walk it over to your t-posts.
Line up the ends of the cattle panel to the t-posts, and then rotate it up into a standing position. Still squeezing the cattle panels from inside the arch, situate each end between the two t-posts on each side.
Tie it down with zip ties
Fine tune the cattle panel arch placement, making sure it’s even and symmetrical on both sides of the t-posts.
Before you tie it down, check the notches and adjust the cattle panel so it sits flush against all four posts.
Now you can secure the cattle panel to the t-posts with zip ties or wire. Make sure you catch both the t-post and the cattle panel and pull the zip tie tight. Attach at least 4 ties per t-post.
Plant on the inside of the arch
There aren’t any hard rules for planting up your arch trellis. You can sow seeds on the inside of the arch. Or the outside. Or both sides. The advantage to inner planting is the bed will be more accessible and you can water, fertilize, inspect plants, and so on, quite easily.
Plenty of crops are a good match for growing up cattle panel arches. Here are some ideas of the things you can plant:
- Pole beans, runner beans, lima beans, and red noodle beans
- Slicing and pickling cucumbers
- Summer and winter squashes
- Snap peas, snow peas, and cowpeas
- 2 to 3 pound personal size watermelon, cantaloupe, pumpkin, and other small melons
- Malabar spinach
- Indeterminate tomatoes (trained and tied to the trellis)
- Climbing nasturtiums, sweet peas, passionflower and other vining beneficial flowers
When planting smaller vines, like beans and peas, sow seeds close to each vertical wire so there is one plant per wire. Melons, squash, and other larger climbers need more space; you can plant four per arch, with two evenly spaced in each bed.
Large fruits will need extra support so they don’t fall from the vine before they’re ready to harvest. You can use pantyhose, mesh bags, fabric scraps, bikini tops, old bras, and myriad other household items to hoist up the developing fruit like a hammock.
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