Grow Thriving Cucumbers With This DIY Trellis
On the world's video sharing platforms, there seems to be a war going on to determine who can grow cucumbers on the simplest possible trellis, and everyone wins! There are a lot of designs supporting a lot of cucumbers, but one of the most space-efficient might be @laurenschell2's teepee trellis design. All you need is some bamboo and some twine. And the cucumbers. Don't forget the cucumber seedlings.
@laurenschell2 DIY bamboo teepee trellis for my cucumbers 🥒 #gardening #vegetablegarden #cucmbers #gardentok #DeserveADrPepperDuet
Pick up four or five pieces of bamboo, each maybe 4-6 feet long, wherever you get your bamboo. If you know anyone who was trying to make a Zen garden a few years ago and now owns an acre of invasive bamboo, that's a good person to ask. You'll also need some twine ... jute is the gold standard in this but nothing else. But you can as easily use yarn, butcher's twine, kite string, that polypropylene stuff at the Home Depot pro exit ... really, almost anything will do.
Arrange your bamboo in a teepee shape, with each piece more or less evenly spaced from the others and meeting near the center at the top. Tie twine around all the pieces where they meet at the top to hold things together, then start wrapping it around the teepee, Christmas lights-style, wrapping (or even tying) the twine to each leg as you cross it. And there you have it, a cucumber teepee made in minutes. But wait, there's more.
Get a good start with your cucumbers
There's nothing difficult about growing cucumbers, but people flub easy things every day. There are some best practices and cucumber peculiarities to be aware of as you plan your teepee trellis. First, you'll need a place to put your trellis. You'll want a place with plenty of sun, and on the other end of things, it's important to remember that cucumbers enjoy soil of the right vintage ... it's probably the terroir. Plant seeds in rich, well-drained soil. It's best to do this when the soil is at least 65 degrees Fahrenheit and all chance of frost has passed; frozen cucumber seedlings are no more pleasant than frozen cucumbers.
Plant seeds about an inch deep. Seedlings started indoors like to be 18-24 inches from their neighbors, but if you grow a vining cuke on your teepee you can probably get away with every 12 inches. Exactly how far apart you should plant cucumbers depends on the variety you're growing. Give them 1-2 inches of water per week, and side-dress the plants with a nitrogen fertilizer before the cucumbers flower.
The finer points of cucumber trellising
Once your vine is well established, you should begin to prune it. Prune away any lateral shoots (suckers) and any leaves that threaten to touch the ground. You'll also need to remove flowers that might start close to the base of the plant. It's one of those things about gardening, like thinning seedlings, that is incredibly counter-intuitive, but it will keep your plant's growth focused on height and will keep cucumbers off the soil. Minimizing contact of leaves and cucumbers with the soil also minimizes the cucumber's exposure to disease. Properly pruning does the same by improving airflow among the plants.
Okay, so your plant is focused on achieving its maximum height ... but what height is that, exactly? Check the seed package or look your variety up online, and make sure your trellis has enough height to accommodate the plant. Allow for the maximum height, because the ideal is to grow cucumbers as vertically as possible. Cucumber vines will happily climb up bamboo, twine, wire, or a particularly lazy dog, so give it the structure that works for you and keep in contained to that structure. As the plant grows and cucumbers begin to develop, wrap the plant around or tie it to the trellis every 6-12 inches. Luckily, cucumbers are typically among the easiest vegetables to grow.