i like to grow my cucumbers on a cattle panel
trellis and you may wonder why i go through the extra work of
putting up a trellis and training up my cucumbers
when typically cucumbers are just as happy sprawling
sprawling along the ground and it's it's a lot less work
quite frankly i am going to show you why i go through the extra step of
trellising my cucumbers first and not least
is that trellising my cucumbers keeps most of the fruit up and out of the way
of my puppers who for some reason love
cucumbers and will eat them off of the vine if they can
now obviously not everyone has that problem but if you do
it's a good reason to trellis your cucumbers but really
my number one reason for trellising cucumbers is ease of harvest
this method makes it so much easier to find the cucumbers
and harvest them compared to something that's sprawling on ground or even on a
low trellis which i will show you in just a minute
and my second big reason for trellising cucumbers is the health of the plants
growing them this way again gets them up off
the ground you're going to improve air circulation
and by doing so you're helping the plants to avoid a lot of the diseases
that come from wet damp dark conditions so i think
bacteria and fungus and things like that so you can see here i
let this guy get way too long but definitely a lot easier to just come
in here find the fruit pick it off and you're
done now another benefit that i didn't
mention is if you happen to be growing these types of cucumbers specifically so
Japanese slicer or like you'll see them referred to as a burpless,
english hot house cucumbers these types that grow
really long if they're up in trellised they will go straight if they are
touching the ground they will start to curve
really it's just an aesthetic problem it doesn't affect the flavor
but if you prefer the light nice long straight fruit like if you're growing
for market or something trellising is the way to go now i
set up my cattle panel trellises for cucumbers the same way that i do for
tomatoes which you may have seen in an earlier video
but here's a real quick little snippet of how i put them
up the process is easier with two people but definitely doable with just one
and i will do three plants per 16 foot section you can do transplants or direct
seeding either one works in most areas and i
will put a small like bamboo post on the base to train the seedling up
until it reaches the bottom of the cattle panel
and then cucumbers tend to be self-supporting they've got these little
tendrils that will cling to the bars of the trellis
but i also find that tying up errant vines and securing them with velcro tape
works to keep everything up and a little cleaner as well
so let's compare this to my other cucumber plant that i have on just a
small a-frame trellis in the garden so here
are my cucumbers grown on this little a-frame trellis
which i think is about three and a half feet
high and my idea was that they would grow up and over and i could get under
here and pick the cucumbers which kind of worked but
then the plants went crazy and now having to dig down
in here to reach the cucumbers which is very inconvenient
you can see i've got more kind of diseases going on i'm not even sure what
this is but the leaves look wilty and terrible
and then the plants have sprawled all over the garden so i'm finding it
difficult to even find the fruit in and amongst these
plants
now the one caveat to all of this being you can get
very compact bush varieties of cucumbers that will work really well if you have a
very small space there are varieties that will set out
vines that are only about 24 to 36 inches long
and with those of course you could get away with growing on ground you can get
away with a very small little trellis or support
this would not be necessary but for growing big
productive vines of cucumbers this in my mind is the way to go so be sure
to drop a line in the comments what is your favorite way to grow your cucumbers
you grow them on a trellis you let them sprawl on the ground
what has worked really well for you and if you find content like this helpful
please consider subscribing to my channel growfully with jenna
thanks for watching and i'll see you next time