trellises

I built 2 trellises for my hops experiment this year.


The first trellis was fairly simple. It consists of a relatively heavy gage 13' long cable running from the hop's pot to the ceiling at my office. The heavier-than-needed cable was intended to give a nice rough surface for the plant to grab onto, while providing a cleaner look than say a jute rope. I sunk an eye-bolt into the pot for the base. I then popped out a tile from the drop-ceiling and hooked the cable to one of the metal channels. The cable was angled to be out of the way, but still get as much sun as possible from the windows.

The second trellis was a little more complex. It consists of 2 - 4"x4" posts (6' and 12' long), 2 - post spikes (24" and 30"), 2 - 24" long soil anchors, 5 - eye screws, 1 - turnbuckle, and some cabling and jute rope.


I went with the post spikes because 1) I figured they were less permanent than concrete and we're eventually going to be building a garage back there and 2) to give my posts a little extra length. I installed the two spikes such that the 6' post / 24" spike was at the surface, and the 12' post / 30" spike was buried and extra 1' for extra stability.

Placement of the posts and the anchors was pretty much based on how much space I had. I managed to get them all about 4' apart. I installed the five eye screws into the posts, 2 on either side of each post 6' from the ground, and 1 on the inside and top of the 12' post. I then ran the angled cable (guy wire) from the 6'-high-eyes to the anchors, getting them as tight as possible. Last I ran the cable connecting the two posts and used a turnbuckle to tighten them all up.

The final step was to run jute rope from stakes in the ground up to the 6' post. I plan to run another jute rope from the 6' post up to the 12'-high-eye with plenty of slack on the other side so that I can raise and lower the line.

So far so good. The system seems pretty stable. The 12' post has just a little bit of a wobble. I figure I might just bolt an extra support to the cinder block by my driveway. An other approach would be to add an extra guy wire and set them up in a triangle - but I'd rather not go this route for space reasons.