Hi, guys.
Sheriden with Garden Guys and Gal here.
I am putting together a really simple tomato trellis for you
to put into your garden.
It's really inexpensive to do, easy to put together.
I'm making mine out of what is called conduit.
So it's just this metal bar that you can pick up.
It's got a nice hole in the center of it.
You can pick it up at any of your home center type stores
like Home Depot, Lowe's, those types of places.
And I'm using 3/4 inch conduit for my trellis today.
I used 10-foot pieces and I had to cut the 10-foot pieces
in half, so that I could get the appropriate size in the garden.
So I've got this piece it's supported by a T-post
that I picked up at one of those home goods stores.
I've just tied it using baling twine.
You can tie it any way you want.
You could use wire.
You could use any kind of string that you have.
It will work just to support it.
So I've pounded this T-post in the ground pretty securely,
and then this is just sitting next to it.
In order to create the Trellis that goes up and overhead,
I'm going to be using this is a 90--
kind of a swoopy 90 degree--
angled piece that slides over this 3/4 inch conduit.
And this is a 1-inch piece.
So it's got to be large enough to slide over.
If I get a 3/4 inch piece it won't slide.
So I'm going to just slide this over the top of it.
And then I have this nice 10-foot piece
that is going to go across.
And this is how I get my distance
for putting in my next T-post, because I've got
to have a T-post on both ends.
So I'm going to slide that in, and pick up
my other 1-inch piece.
And then I'm actually going to walk down here to the end.
OK.
I'm going to slide on my 90-degree angle piece
and I'm going to slide it over this base.
And this is going to tell me where to put this T-post.
So I already measured it.
I've already put the T-post in, because it's really loud
and I didn't think you'd want to watch me pound that in.
You just need a T-post pounder.
They're very easy.
Or you can use a mallet.
And then I've got baling twine again.
So I'm just going to wrap this around a couple of times
and secure this with a nice knot.
Make sure this doesn't go anywhere.
I'm actually going to give myself two ties.
There's our second one.
Just tie a nice square knot that's not going anywhere.
And this is really sturdy.
So you can see, I can get a lot of tomatoes on here
or whatever I choose to trellis.
I can trellis all different kinds of things.
I can trellis cucumbers, I can trellis peppers,
all different types of things.
So this is kind of our basic support structure.
And now I'm going to show you how
to get the actual strings on and how
to clip them to your plants.
OK.
So here is the trellis.
You can see it's the same thing.
I've got it put together.
Instead of using those 90 degree pieces that
connect on the other trellis that I just showed you,
this is a different way of connecting.
And these are just 3/4 inch 90 degree connectors.
They're a little more expensive and they're
a little more fragile, so I actually
like the first way I showed you better.
So we've been messing around with this for a year or two
trying to figure out the best way to do this.
In order to get the tomatoes or whatever plant
I'm growing to go up and vertical,
I'm going to need a few things.
I'm going to need some tomato twine or some kind
of baling twine, any kind of string that's going
to last throughout the season.
I tend not to use a twine that kind of degrades
or falls apart, just because it just doesn't last.
I'm also going to need some kind of stake.
So you can use a fabric staple.
These work really well and they're really inexpensive.
You can pick up little hooks like this.
There are a couple of different ways that you can do this.
So for my tomato twine, I like to double it.
I like to have double the amount that I need.
So I've measured this to the ground
from the top of the trellis, and I I'm just
going to loop it over the top.
This is a really simple way to loop it through.
I'm going to make sure it's right over my tomato,
because I don't want crooked tomatoes.
And I'm going to take this down to the ground,
and I'm going to tie a knot in the bottom
just so it sits right about ground level
where that knot is.
OK, next I'm going to take this landscape fabric staple
or I can take the hook, whichever I choose,
and I'm going to thread this through right so the knot is
in the middle of it.
And this is so easy, anyone can do it.
I'm just going to push that staple down into the ground
right next to my plant.
It's going to be very, very close to it.
And you can see that my plant is positioned so that it
can continue to grow up this.
As it grows, it will continue to trellis it to the string.
The next thing you're going to need
are these things called tomato clips.
And they're really inexpensive.
You can pick them up on Amazon, several places.
They make several different kinds.
It's a string trellis clip.
So it has this piece on the back where you can clip it
right directly to the string.
And because it holds onto the string,
that's what's going to hold our plant up.
So I'm going to clip this right onto the string.
And then this round piece goes around my plant stem.
So if I'm doing cucumbers or tomatoes or peppers,
whatever I'm trellising, that's going to go around the stem.
So I'm just going to put that together and clip it.
It's as easy as that.
As this plant grows every week I will come out
with some more of these clips and I
will clip them as this plant grows up this trellis.
This requires a little bit of specialized pruning,
which we're going to come back and show you how to do.
As the plants grow, we will show you how to prune.
So if you want to put in one of these easy systems
in your backyard, it's a great way
to get more tomatoes in a smaller space.
You can see for this 10 foot area, I have 10 tomatoes.
And if we plant them traditionally,
it's not easy to get 10 tomatoes in a small space like this.
So this is a great way to add more to your garden.
So, thanks for watching and happy gardening.