Feel Free To Climb About The Trellis

It’s safe to say that our veggie garden has officially sprung and we are happy to announce that we will, in fact, have vegetables this year!  Last weekend we were taking a walk through the garden, occasionally weeding it (I had to wait a few weeks until I could tell for certain the difference between a weed and one of the veggie plants…I’m still a gardening novice).  But one plant variety that is absolutely exploding are the green beans.

Well hello there Mr. Bean…green bean that is.  This is our second year growing green beans and we’ve learned a few things about how to grown them.  For instance, last year we staked the beans too late and used a system of sticks and twine.  It didn’t work so well.  The twine kept collapsing and the green beans pretty much grew on the ground.  So this year we opted to build a trellis for them to grow up.  Novel idea.  AND we were thrifty about it and used left over pressure treated wood from the deck project to make it.

The green bean trellis project was super simple.  It started with Colby ripping down the pressure treated wood to about 1″ widths using his table saw.

Then it was just a matter of screwing together the lattice system and then attaching the two trellis pieces together at the top using a pair of leftover brackets from another project.  And voila…instant trellis.

We planted two rows of green beans this year and plopped the trellis right in between the two rows.  We figured this would efficiencize our trellis system by allowing the beans crawl up both sides of it instead of just one.  And harvesting should be a snap.  We’ll just walk right down one row and then back down the other.

Here’s a closeup of the brackets and screws that Colby used to attach the two trellis pieces together:

The two brackets were leftover from another project, and honestly, neither of us can remember what they were for.  They were just another item rescued from the depths of the man cave.  The brackets are supposed to be flat but Colby bent them right in half to make them work for this project.

And when it comes time to pack up the garden for the W-season that shall not be named right now (shhhh…don’t say it…you may scare the sun away…it’s like saying Voldemort around Hogwarts), we’ll just fold the trellis up and pack it into the shed with the other summertime items.

We’re excited to see how well the green beans do this year with the new trellis in place.  Fingers crossed the plants grow!  We haven’t seen our old friend Mr. Groundhog around in awhile so it looks like we don’t have to worry about him eating the garden.  But back to the trellis project.  In total, the project took about fifteen minutes and cost us…oh….how about ZERO dollars!  Gotta love a free project that uses up materials already in hand.  Three cheers to thrifty!

Pssst…Speaking of toasting thrifty, Colby and I were out for dinner on Saturday night and had HORRIBLE service.  We’re talking almost walked out kind of horrible.  But in the end, one of the waitresses took our drinks off the tab and gave as a second round for free…awww!  Not gonna lie, we toasted cheapness and said we would prefer the bad service/free drinks combo any day over full price!  Is that bad?  Perhaps a smidge?!  But we can’t be the only ones.  Any other thrifty peeps out there?  Got a great “save a buck” story?  Do tell!