Building A DIY Trellis? The TikTok Gardening Community Has You Covered
In the season of lush growth and warmer temperatures, you spend more time in gardens and other outdoor spaces. Enjoying the yield of flowers and vegetable gardens is one of the best parts of summer, but keeping a thriving garden going often depends on care and proper outfitting. One of the most crucial items to include for climbing plants is a trellis, as it can support the greenery and maximize vertical outdoor space. While garden and home retailers sell plenty of perfectly fine trellises, sometimes the best and most unique ones are the kind you make custom for your specific needs. TikTok is blooming with amazingly ingenious ideas from internet DIYers for making your own trellis.
Offering important support for climbing or top-heavy plants, trellises come in a wide variety of incarnations, from the small and simple to the mammoth and complex. By following the TikTok gardening community's advice, you can find the perfect DIY trellis for every plant, leading to healthy gardens and flowerbeds. Whether you are starting from scratch or looking for a way to repurpose everyday objects and staples you already have, these ideas are perfect for making your garden bountiful and beautiful.
Creating a DIY trellis
TikTok has excellent advice on the kinds of trellis formats that every gardener needs that use everything from traditional retailer tomato cages to larger spans of wire fencing. The best DIY budget-friendly versions of these trellises are often the simplest. With some salvaged wood or sticks, you can make a basic trellis great for lighter climbing plants with lengths of twine strung in a grid pattern. For heavier vines like cucumbers, squash, and melons, opt for a wire grid. You could also use small nails to place a strung DIY trellis on the side of your home or fence in a grid or decorative pattern for a stunning wall of ivy or clematis.
For more complex trellises, place three sticks or pieces of bamboo together to form a tent over plants that provides a perfect climbing surface for beans. String it horizontally with twine to make a great DIY tomato cage. For an under $10 arched trellis great for dangling flowers like wisteria and honeysuckle or multiple types of veggie plantings in one spot, try using flexible ladder mesh available in the construction supply aisle fastened together with heavy-gauge wire. There are also tons of repurposed items from your home that may make perfect trellises without much modification, including a large link chain, old windows and doors, or extra fencing. Or, repurpose discarded larger pieces like a headboard or rusty spring frame as a large trellis in your garden that can accommodate many plants or vines.
Things to keep in mind
Some of these DIY trellises may not be as weatherproof as many of the trellises you can buy in a store, so you may want to construct them out of weatherized wood and rust-proof wire. Since they are inexpensive to build, you could also just replace necessary elements like twine and wire each year, which will allow you to adapt your system of trellises for what you are planting from season to season. To protect lumber pieces, consider adding a coat of weatherproof stain before installing your trellis.
Unlike plastic and many pre-fab trellises, these DIY options are often more planet-friendly and recyclable than plastic and other manufactured materials, so they make a great option if you are looking for materials that are easier on the Earth. When you are finished, many of the materials can be easily upcycled for other uses in and around your home.