Today I want to tell you why I'm replacing this with this.
Now we've been using these cattle panel trellises these 16 foot long
Galvanized panels for many many years to trellis some of our vegetable crops. They work great for cucumbers,
Pole beans, and we use them for English peas. They make a really strong trellis. There's no doubt about that.
But the one caveat about these cattle panel trellises is that they are cumbersome
they can take a long time to put up and they're also hard to move around the garden. Now I can install this type of
trellis by myself and I've done it many of times, but it's really a two-man job
The other thing is is that they're hard to move around the garden as much as we like to rotate our crops around here
Just putting this up for one season or two seasons and then having to move it to another location
Can be aggravating and time-consuming
so I wanted something that was a little more mobile something that was easier to set up and
Easier to take down so I can rotate my trellis crops around my different garden subplots a lot better
So this stuff here is called Hortonova trellis netting and the commercial cucumber growers around this region have been using this stuff for years
But we've never tried it ourselves
Until this year and I can already tell you this stuff right here is the ticket this hortonova trellis
Netting comes rolled up like this and we've got it available in many different sizes
So you can get the size that's going to fit your garden perfectly
Or you can do like I did and just get a big roll and just cut it to whatever length you like
It unrolls really easily like this and then it just folds out to the right height.
We've got some that's 4 foot tall. We've got some that's 5 foot tall. This stuff is made from a material called polypropylene
Which is a synthetic material and it reminds me of some really thick high tensile fishing line
You're not going to be able to tear this stuff
You can cut it to length easily with some pruning shears, but this stuff's not going to rip or tear
It's really really strong and what I really like about this Hortonova trellis is that it is super easy and quick to install
So I've got a row of cucumbers here about a 40-foot row that are just starting to climb
Along this trellis here. And if I would've did this with cattle panels
It would have probably took me 30 to 45 minutes to install that system with this Hortonova trellis here
I was able to put this up in about 10 minutes easy.
Another great thing about this trellising system is that it doesn't require as many T-posts with a cattle panel trellis
You'll have T-posts on the end and then one in the middle of the panel
So you end up having T posts about every 7 and 1/2 feet with this Hortonova trellis
You can stretch your T-posts out to about 10 to 15 feet
so a lot of times you'll end up using half as many T-posts as you would with the panel the
Installation on this stuff is really easy. So we first take our roll and just roll it out to the length
we need it and we take some shears and kind of cut it off there and then
we'll unfold it and we'll secure it to a T-post on one end of the row with just some zip ties here and it
Usually only takes three or four and once we have it secure it on one end of the row
we'll go ahead and stretch it and pull it tight to the other end of the row and secure it there.
Then we can put some zip ties on those T-post in the middle
It works great for in-ground gardens like we have here but it also works really great for raised beds
So if you've got a raised bed
It'll be hard to put one of those cattle panels on top of the raised bed and secure it with
This system right here
You can just put a T-post on the outside on both sides of the raised bed
Stretch this across there and you've got you a nice quick and easy trellis for your cucumbers your pole beans your English peas
Or whatever
So if you want to easier and quicker way to handle those trellis crops in your vegetable garden
Do like I did and ditch that heavy cattle panel and go with this Hortonova trellis here.
It's going to give you a lot more time to enjoy your vegetable garden as opposed to spending time lugging around those heavy panels.
I'll put some links below to all of our sizes of this Hortonova trellis. I hope you enjoyed this video.
We'll see you next time.