Originally posted in the
Show Me Your Pallet Projects! thread, but this relates to gardening as well...
It's raining outside today, so I thought I might as well post an update on the progress of Dear Wife's bitter melons growing in the backyard.
Back in June, Dear Wife got some bitter melon plants from a friend of her's. She asked me if I could make some kind of a trellis for the bitter melon plants to climb up on. I scavenged through my pile of pallet wood and built this trellis for her...
I just used some 2X4's from a couple of long pallets, made a frame about 6 feet tall, and stapled on some 2X4 welded wire I had left over from making my chicken run. Total cost to me, less than a dollar for the screws and staples.
Fast forward to a couple days ago, here is a picture of the same bitter melon raised bed...
For those of you who don't know much about bitter melon, here are some pictures of what they look like. They will get much bigger before we pick them, of course, but Dear Wife is all excited that we might get some to grow here in northern Minnesota...
The pallet wood trellis is rock solid, and I love how the bitter melon has filled out the wire. Bitter melon is a tropical plant, so if we get any melons at all, it will be a great success for us. We live in zone 3b, not tropical at all.
I think I will build another pallet wood trellis next year for cucumbers, which should grow even better.
I am also thinking about building some kind of trellis system for cherry tomatoes, I started some cherry tomato plants inside the house this year and transplanted them outside the 1st of June. I thought the cherry tomatoes I bought were bush type, but the plant grew to about 6 foot tall and then flopped over from all the weight, only supported by my 3-foot-tall tomato cages. I was told later that most cherry tomatoes are indeterminant plants and that I should have a much taller cage or trellis system. My bad. So, I am looking for ideas on making a trellis or cage system out of pallet wood for those tomatoes next year.
