Well, my garden projects just keep expanding. Today we added three new cattle panel arches. Thanks, Reid, my dear spouse for all your work.
Growing vertically has so many advantages: more growing space in the garden beds, help with pest control and disease management, better air circulation for plants, easier to spot fruit growing, and of course the stunning visual appeal.
Cattle panels make fantastic trellises. I bought a very nice trellis kit from a very nice garden catalog and it is fine, but not nearly as strong as a cattle panel. (After all a livestock panel is designed to keep large animals fenced. If it can handle a 2000 pound bull, it can handle a pile of watermelons!) The nice catalog trellis cost three times as much as a single cattle panel. Plus it took us forever to construct the catalog trellis and there were some sharp words exchanged in the process. (Who me?)
Disclaimer: This is not my original invention… lots of other people have great videos on building cattle panels. But, here’s how we constructed ours today.
What you’ll need:
Cattle Panel (A Hog Panel also works, but it is 3 feet wide rather than the 4′ of a cattle panel)
4 T-Posts (we used 5 foot posts here, but you can also use a 6 foot post)
fencing clips or strong zip ties. (Not totally essential, but an extra precaution)
We put up 3 arches… it took about 1 hour total.
The hardest part was getting the cattle panels home from the store. A pickup truck is really useful (thanks Mark).
I usually purchase my cattle panels from my local farm supply store (SHOUTOUT TO COLLEEN FEED & SEED in Arrington, VA https://www.facebook.com/colleenfeedandseed/ but sadly they were out of stock this week so we had to go over to Tractor Supply. I like to support our local businesses and the folks at Colleen Feed & Seed are super nice and helpful.
I can’t wait to see these new arches filled with all sorts of growing things. (hopefully not groundhogs and deer though).