2025-06-15

I made two trellises for this project. One connected cucumber row crops to an 18" raised bed (cucumbers and peppers), and the other connected the two raised beds together. 6' sticks of 3/4" EMT were used for the legs. I anchored the legs to the ground with t-posts and reusable zip ties. The incremental bend calculator was helpful for creating the arches. The cucumber trellis on the right turned out exactly as planned, but the trellis connecting to the tomato raised bed (left bed) was a bit more challenging. I attached left over deer fencing to each trellis with zip ties. I've never built anything out of EMT before. I'm very pleased with the results.

I created 30" weights using leftover EMT and sand. I packed each tube before capping the ends. The weights were placed at the base of each tomato plant row. Garden twine was tied around each weight with the other end of the twine tied to the supports above each plant. You can adjust the slack in the twine by wrapping the loose rope around the weights. Plant clips were used to secure the vines to the gardening twine.

UPDATE: 2025-06-20

Here is a different angle of the tomato bed where you can see the supports a little better. I tied quick release knots on the support side. That way I could easily reposition the twine if I needed to. There are probably hundreds of different ways to setup these vertical tomato supports. Placing cattle fencing on top of the enclosure like Bob did in his build is an excellent idea. I might adopt that at some point.