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Continuing with our Victory Garden series, we offer this trellis design to increase your vine crop production in a small area. Admittedly, what you see pictured here will never be on Home Depot’s inventory; and you’ll never see it in one of those luxurious suburban dream garden magazine spreads. That’s because the trellis is pure function, held together at the base by the earth itself. But the virtues are many. First is simplicity. Only two materials are used: 6 bamboo upright poles and two pieces of bicycle inner tube form the structure; four more diagonal poles are added to help the plants climb. The bamboo poles were purchased for about 20 cents each in bulk, and will last 5 years or more if you put them away at season’s end. The bicycle inner tubes were got from the repair shop waste basket and cut into segments with a knife. The second virtue is design for rapid assembly and rapid disassembly. Experienced gardeners know that at year’s end they’ll be busy putting the harvest by, the weather can be nasty, and we’re about “gardened out.” So anything that makes clearing debris and putting away equipment easy is going to be much appreciated. Because there’s no tying of twine, you don’t even have to cut it away when you’re done.

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Originally by John Laumer from Treehugger on May 4, 2006, 7:23am