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DIY cucumber trellis for free

Farmer and I have made a lot of things for my garden. Usually it starts with me having a “brilliant idea” that I just can’t do all by myself … and ends up with him doing most of it himself while I take pictures and hold Munch. I keep telling him when Munch starts to walk I will be a better assistant, but I suppose someone still has to take the pictures right??

Well after countless yard, garden, and farm projects, I still have one favorite. It’s kind of silly that it’s my favorite when you think of some of the other elaborate projects we have done. But I still get excited every year when I get it all situated in it’s new place.

So I thought you guys might like to know how I (Ahem …. Farmer) did it, so that you can have your own rustic cucumber trellis for free.

Alright here is what your gonna need:

4 posts
scrap fencing material (we used old cattle fencing)
Nails
Shovel
Hammer
Bolt cutters or something that will cut your fencing
Twine or rope to secure the tops (optional)

First I want to talk about where to get these things. I live on a farm. With that, comes a plethora of free “junk” items. We have a huge equipment yard that family and friends have been depositing their unwanted items/farm equipment in for years. We also have a few shops full of tools and old building supplies. I was able to find everything I needed, right outside my house, for free.

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However! I realize this is not a reality for most people. Don’t despair, you can still have your cucumber trellis for free … or pretty darn close to it. But you will have to do some things that you might not be very excited about. Which is … ask people. Here are some ways I have got free or discounted things like this in the past:

Know anyone with a junk pile or equipment yard? They are often full of things you can use that the owner would be happy to give or sell to you. Just ask your friend if you can look through their junk pile, and if you find anything you want, then you can determine how much you would offer to pay them. In my experience, people don’t accept money if your cleaning up their yard for them unless is a bigger item that’s worth some money.
Look around your own place. Especially smaller items like nails, should be a little easier to find. They don’t have to look pretty. In fact, it kind of ads to the cool rustic farmhouse look if you use busted up or old items.
Call around to your local feed and supply type stores. Ask them if they have the items you need, and then ask if they have any broken or damaged ones that you could purchase for less. This is much more effective if you go to a smaller business rather then a large chain. Big chain stores usually won’t mark down the price very much and they definitely won’t give you anything for free. But small town stores often have the owner available to ask on the spot, and they don’t have rules forbidding them from giving things to random people. One particular large chain store told me that it was literally against the law for them to give me the very item they were tossing in the trash out back. I have no idea if that is for real, but that is what the worker told me. Then she told me that if I waited a few minutes I could go get it out of the dumpster as long as she didn’t see it because then she would be required to report me haha. I did not do it, but now I know which store can’t give me anything for free! When I have asked smaller stores, I have gotten things everywhere from 10% off to completely free. One store a few weeks ago told me they didn’t have any at the moment, but he would call me soon because they often have damaged cattle fencing.
Be aware when your out and about in the car. Again, I know that not everyone lives in a farming community, but that doesn’t mean people aren’t pulling out fences to replace them. All you have to do is ask. Most people are really nice and they will either tell you yes or no. I have never been chased off or threatened and I have asked for A LOT of things. One time there was an orchard being pulled out and I asked for some of the old poles (that time was a polite no). Another time, someone was pulling out railroad ties to put up a nicer fence. All I had to do was ask and go pick them up! Just this week I saw some wooden tomato cages in my neighbors burn pile and promptly texted to ask if she was going to burn them. She even brought them to my house!

My goodness are we to the instruction part yet?? If you need a visual, check out our YouTube video.

Now that you have your supplies, let’s get this baby built!

Decide where you are going to put it, and how large you want to make it. This might depend a little on what size of items you were able to acquire. I placed my trellis over a pathway so I could walk underneath it. And I made it about four feet wide. I have 2 trellis’s and they are different sizes because of the fencing I had on hand. Cut up your fencing first and lay it out to make sure you know how wide to set your posts. I cut my cattle panels into four pieces that were each about four feet wide. Then I can stack two on top of each other to make my trellis tall enough to walk underneath.
Dig four holes where you want your posts. Make sure to dig deep enough that the trellis will be properly supported. But do remember that the trellis will be leaning against itself so that provides support too. I dug my holes about 12-18 inches deep and I have had no problems.
Set your posts and back fill the holes so that the posts are leaning up against each other the way you want them. One of my trellis’s has much taller poles so they cross each other at the top and one doesn’t. You will tie these together at the end to secure them if they are tall enough.
Hold your fencing up to determine where you want it. It’s a good idea to put the bottom of it several inches off the ground so you can reach your hand around and under it later on. Mark where the top of the fencing will be, set it of to the side, and pound a nail half way in on both poles at that mark. Then you can easily hang the fencing on the nails and you wont have to hold it up while you pound the nail.
Once the fencing is hung up, pound the nail so it curls over the fencing and hooks it into place. Then just pound a whole bunch of nails all the way down the pole, hooking them over the fencing to secure it properly. One section done, three more to go!
When you have all four fencing pieces nailed to your posts, you can tie rope or twine around the tops to secure it together a little better.

Now all you need to do is plant a bunch of cucumbers at the bottom, and in a few months you will have a beautiful trellis covered in lush cucumber plants just dangling their bounty there for you to pick easily. I love how easy it makes it to harvest my cucumbers. I also love that it holds them up off the ground so they aren’t sitting in the dirt getting dirty and growing into funny shapes.

A few more tips:

If your selling your produce, you NEED a trellis to grow your cucumbers. The vegetables themselves will grow into much smoother and less damaged cucumbers that look pretty and unblemished because they aren’t laying on the ground.
As the cucumbers grow, you will need to loop the plants through the fencing to train them to grow up your trellis.
I move my trellis every year for crop rotation. Get somebody to help you carry the trellis and it won’t be a big deal to move it. Just dig your holes first, then you can carry it over and set it in one side at a time.

If you only do one garden project a year, do this one! I LOVE my cucumber trellis and the benefits just keep going and going!

If you like DIY projects, check out my DIY BEEFY tomato cage for only $6 video tutorial or enter your best DIY project into my DIY farm and garden contest. Hurry! it ends soon.

~Farmer’s Wife

Farmhouse Garden Gardening How To's

Small garden space? Grow over $244 worth of produce in 9 square feet

So if you are all about growing a garden to save money, then we need to be best friends. One of the things I have tried my hardest to do in my adult life is save money. And it just so turns out that my very favorite way to do that is by growing a garden.

Over the years, I have discovered what fruits and veggies sell for outrageous prices, and which ones are almost the same price to grow as they are in the store. But it wasn’t until a few weeks ago that I actually sat down and figured out exactly how much each and every plant in my garden saves me each year. Wow, figuring that out was sure surprising!

Tomatoes actually claims the number one spot in my garden. Then way way down at the very bottom you will find romaine lettuce. When I discovered romaine saved me almost no money, it was actually a relief because I dislike growing romaine. Correction …. I don’t dislike GROWING romaine, it’s WASHING it after I pick it that I hate, since it always has dirt and bugs stuck clear down in the folds. If you would like to see the entire list of 26 veggies I grow in my garden ranked in order of what saves me the most money, just head over to the subscribe box real quick, give me your email, and I will have it to you by tomorrow morning.

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So now that I know exactly how much money each plant is saving me, it will completely change the way I plan my garden! Now I know what every square foot of my garden is worth. I will probably double the amount of tomatoes I grow next year because now I see a hundred dollar bill growing out of the top of each one of my plants. I will also be filling all the little leftover spaces with herbs because of how high they rank on the list.

If I draw out what I am going to plant in my boxes, then I can calculate exactly what each box is going to save me. So today I thought I might draw out a grow box for you guys, that is small enough that almost everyone can find space for. This grow box that I have drawn up, will save you over $244 in 9 square feet. And I am not even putting any tomatoes in it!

I bet your wondering why I didn’t put any tomatoes in it …. well tomatoes are one of the things in my garden that I don’t plant with other fruits or veggies. This is because the watering requirements for tomatoes are so different than most other plants, that I end up over watering my tomatoes or under watering whatever I plant with them. For this reason, I give my tomatoes a grow box or two, all to themselves. This is my tomato patch. They are there I promise, just tiny little babies freshly planted and all set up in their cages.

If you are willing to plant your entire 9 square feet to tomatoes, then you would save over $240 also. But I wanted to give you a garden plan that you could pack full with all different kinds of veggies, in case this was your only space for growing.

Are you ready to see it??

This box is 3 feet x 3 feet. The pictures ARE NOT cut to scale. I cut them bigger so you could see what each thing is. And the bottom of the grow box should be facing the sun. Where I live, that would be south. If you face it the wrong direction, your short plants will be shaded by the tall cucumber trellis.

Just because I feel like it, let’s start in the middle! The back, center of your box with be filled with a huge, beautiful, productive zucchini plant. In my garden, zucchini saves me at least $37.50 per plant. They give me one or two zucchinis every week, all summer long!

If you put up a skinny A-frame trellis over the back end of the zucchini and carefully train the plants to go up it instead of attacking your zucchini plant, then you can put one cucumber plant on either side in the back corners. Again, the pictures ARE NOT to scale. You will need to put your trellis in the very back corners. Our favorite variety is the lemon cucumber because it doesn’t go bitter like slicing varieties sometimes do, and the kids think they look cool. Lemon cucumbers save me $30 per plant X 2 plants = $60Moving forward, I put 2 mini bell pepper plants on either side. The plants themselves are not mini, just the peppers. I love these because they are snack size and sweet. I almost never see them in my garden because Little man eats them all the instant they are ripe, but when I do they are a tasty treat! They save me $9 X 2 plants = $18

The front three spots are reserved for herbs. I was blown away by how much herbs save me. The thing with herbs is you really don’t have to grow that much to have all you need. Maybe I need to use more herbs in my cooking! In a 1 foot x 1 foot area each, basil saves me $40.50, thyme saves me $54.00, and cilantro saves me $40.50. If you cut them correctly, you can harvest them for several months.

I got these numbers by reading my garden journal to remember how much each plant produces. Then I multiplied it by what the fruit stand down the road charges for its produce. I took the lowest numbers possible, to be sure that you can save AT LEAST what I am telling you. It is likely that you will save even more though because you have a serious green thumb, and your going to follow all the other advice on my blog right??

So even if all you can spare is a tiny, 9 square feet area, you can still save a bunch of money growing your own food! This garden plan is one of the most profitable options of plant combinations. I hope this helps you start saving tons of money with your garden too.

Again, if you would like the entire list of veggies in order of what they save me, simply subscribe to my blog and it will be in your inbox in the morning!

~Farmer’s Wife

Farmhouse Garden Gardening How To's

The 3 biggest factors in how big and juicy your raspberry fruit gets

Over the past 7 years I have raised three different raspberry patches in three different places. My first patch spread really nicely, and the plants looked okay, but the berries were always tiny and a bit tart. Then we moved, and my new patch did pretty well. This time they were under the sprinkling system. The plants always looked really nice and healthy, and the patch grew and spread out wonderfully, but still my berries were small and sparse.

For a few years, I tried a lot of different things to get my patch to produce bigger and more flavorful berries. I began to notice the things that made the biggest difference and the things that made no difference at all.

Then three years ago, I decided to move my patch to a new location, start from scratch, and do it right. Now let me show you the size of the berries I am getting.

My plants are LOADED with huge, juicy, sweet raspberries. And the best part …… I know exactly what I did to make them produce this way. The best part for you, is that you have someone like me to tell you how to get your raspberry patch to do the same thing. Pretty great right!

First let me tell you what DOESN’T make a difference so that you don’t waste your time.

It makes almost no difference how close or far apart you put your plants originally. They are going to spread and fill in vigorously, no matter what. If your looking for an exact number, then plant them somewhere between 6 inches and 5 feet apart. How’s that for specific? It doesn’t matter! They are going to go wherever they feel like going anyways.

It doesn’t matter too much WHEN you prune them, only HOW you prune them. Which I will explain, in detail, in just a second. I have pruned right after harvest in the summer, I have pruned in the fall, and I have pruned in the spring. It might change the exact time that your raspberries are ripe and ready to eat, but it won’t change how big or delicious your berries are.

It also doesn’t matter whether you trellis them or not. I am not saying you shouldn’t trellis. I happen to love my trellis because it holds the plants up out of the pathway and makes it much easier to find the berries. I would recommend trellising them somehow, all I am saying is that it plays no factor in how big and sweet your raspberries will be. Some of the biggest berries I have found were half buried in the dirt. Sad, but still delicious after I wash them off. So if you don’t have the time, or money, to spend on some way to trellis them, don’t fret! You can still grow killer huge raspberries if you do the other things I tell you.

Now that we got that stuff out of the way, let me tell you what absolutely DOES make a difference.

Water. Raspberries love water. They will do okay without tons of it, but there is no way you will get the size and taste of berries that you should be getting. I water my raspberries, with a drip system (always a drip system in my garden), every three or four days, VERY DEEP. Which means I soak them for multiple hours on the days that I water. I practically flood them. If your plants LOOK thirsty, then your waiting too long in between waterings. Every single one of those tiny flavorful bubbles on your raspberries is basically a pocket of water. FILL IT UP and your berries will literally burst in your mouth. Oh man, my mouth is watering just talking about it. Here is a picture of my DIY drip system heading off into my raspberry patch. It works beautifully, and has for three years now.

WHEN you feed them. I have always used homemade compost for everything in my garden so I can’t speak to what kind to use if you don’t make your own, but you have to use SOMETHING. I have learned that when you feed your plants makes all the difference. Raspberries are crazy tough. They will grow through anything, they will spread out into hard crusty dirt that has never seen water, and they will pretty much do whatever they want without your help. But if you want huge, sweet berries, then you have to FEED THEM when they are hungry. And when are they most hungry? When they are putting all their energy into making fruit. If you don’t feed them, then they will toss out piddly little sour berries so they can get back to growing in every direction, which is what they really want to be doing. What you need to do is generously feed them large amounts of compost right when the first blossoms appear. This makes your crazy raspberry plants pause for a second, and stuff themselves with the food you just offered them in return for better berries. And they will thank you, by putting all that extra energy into producing a berry bigger and juicier then you have ever had on your plants before. Just make sure to water your patch extra well right after you feed them so the nutrients can soak down to the roots. If you grow a variety that produces throughout the summer instead of all at once then continue to feed them every couple of weeks as long as they are still putting on blossoms.

And the last one is HOW you prune your raspberries. Like I said earlier, it hasn’t made a noticeable difference WHEN I prune them (as long as it’s not right before or during your berry harvest, you wouldn’t do that would you?) only HOW I do it. I have heard a lot of conflicting advice on this subject, so I have tried four different strategies. I have tried cutting them off very low, like about 2 feet tall. I have tried pruning them to be about chest level. I have tried pruning them really tall, like over my head (I am 5’5″). And I have also tried not pruning them at all. The very best results, by a long shot, came from pruning to be chest level. When I pruned them short, they were fairly large berries, but the plant was so small that it only produced half of what I normally harvest. When I pruned them over my head, the berries were smaller because of how many berries were on each raspberry cane. And when I didn’t prune them at all, the plants were so tall and stringy that they produced almost no berries and were very unhealthy looking. They also whipped around in the wind so bad that anything that was on them got destroyed. So now I usually prune in the fall, and I cut everything off at about chest level. This year I pruned in the spring because I had a baby last October. You also need to cut off all of the old canes (plants) at ground level because raspberries produce on the 2 year old canes. If you don’t cut out the old ones, then your plants will be putting wasted energy into growing something that isn’t giving you any fruit. It’s usually pretty easy to tell which ones are old, they start looking like sticks instead of plants. Here, I will show you what I mean.

So if you really want your berries to be the biggest, juiciest, and sweetest that they can be, you absolutely must give them tons of water, feed your plants when they are hungry, and prune the right way! No more wondering why your raspberries are pathetic, I just told you how to fix them!

We started our raspberry patch for $8.00, and three years later, it’s producing over $400.00 worth of berries! Wanna know how we did it? Check it out RIGHT HERE.

And that’s not even close to what saves us the most money in our garden! Wanna know what saves us even more then that? Subscribe to The Real Farmhouse and you will have my list of plants ranked according to how much they save us by tomorrow morning!

*I had a bunch of people asking how I get my raspberry patch to stay put in a nice row, so I wrote about it! CLICK HERE to read my secrets to making your plants hold still!

Seriously guys, I hope this year your plants are loaded with the biggest raspberries you have ever seen.

~Farmer’s Wife

Farmhouse Garden Gardening How To's

2 things you need to stop doing to your tomatoes right now!

Alright I don’t want to offend anyone by writing this, but there is a lot of tomato information floating around out there, and some of it is just NOT CORRECT. I feel bad for the people trying to grow beautiful, healthy tomatoes that are being fed bad information. All of your hard work and dedication is being stunted by the false information that you are trying to implement in your garden.

All that I can speak to are the methods and techniques that I have tried MYSELF over the years, and I would never claim something is false if I didn’t properly test it out myself. The things that I am going to talk about are what have absolutely NOT worked for me in the past. In fact, they have done the opposite. They have hindered my tomato growth and production, and I feel obligated to share them with you.

False information #1. “Water your tomatoes often. When the leaves start to curl a little during the day, that means you’re not giving them enough water.”

Oh my gosh, I can’t even spit the words out fast enough to tell you that this is COMPLETELY OPPOSITE of what you should be doing!

Just like people, tomatoes need to be pushed and fully exerted to reach their full potential. If you took a person, and sat them down, and fed them healthy food, and treated them nice, and brought them water all the time, but never made them exercise or do anything hard, would they be very strong? No. They would be somewhat healthy from eating good food, and drinking water all the time, but they wouldn’t grow big and strong physically. Tomatoes are the same way. They are a HUGE plant, and they NEED big strong roots to support their weight and production.

If you water them all the time, their roots don’t have to work or stretch even a little bit to get to the water, because it’s always right there at the top of the soil. They don’t bother to grow down deep into the dirt to reach more nutrients because they never have to. And since their roots are shallow, the plant doesn’t grow as big or as sturdy as it should be.

By watering your tomato plants often, you are actually stunting their growth and enabling the plant to be a huge wuss. There I said it! Your making your plants into wimps!

Now, for the second part … your tomatoes leaves curl up during the day as a defense mechanism to protect themselves from the sun. They are not curling because they are thirsty, they are curling because they are hot. It is an important thing to pay attention to though because it can be a sign that they are thirsty, if you are looking at the right time. The key is to inspect your tomatoes FIRST THING IN THE MORNING. If the leaves are curling at all before the sun has been up very long, then it means they are thirsty. It’s not late enough in the day for them to be hot yet, so they are telling you that they could use a drink.

I only water my tomatoes every 5-8 days. I water them with a soaker hose for two hours because it is imperative that the water soaks very deep down into the soil. Let the soil on top dry out a bit, quit stressing out when the top isn’t wet, and please please PLEASE quit watering your tomatoes every day.

*It should be noted that if your tomatoes are planted in a container, the watering requirements are different because the soil will dry out much quicker.

False information #2. “Remove all the suckers from your plant to get more tomatoes.”

Before you start yelling at the computer that I am wrong, hear me out.

Removing the suckers (the shoot that grows in between two other branches) from your plants is fine IF IT’S THE RIGHT KIND OF TOMATO. If it’s the wrong kind of tomato, then you may be hurting your tomato crop. And I would guess that there are a lot of people that don’t know which kinds of tomatoes are the right kinds.

If you are growing a determinate variety of tomatoes, you SHOULD NOT be breaking off the suckers. If you are growing an indeterminate variety then it depends on where you live and how much work you want to put in. And if determinate and indeterminate sound like a different language to you, please read this post that explains the difference. If I explain it here, this post will end up 3 times longer.

If you break off the suckers on a determinate tomato, you are stressing the plant unnecessarily. The plant will be smaller, and it will still produce all of its tomatoes at once …. are you understanding this? Your plant will be smaller, so you get less tomatoes. Then your plant quits producing (because it’s determinate), and dies, and you end up with a smaller, sadder harvest. Just leave it be, let your determinate plant grow how it wants, and it will happily give you as many tomatoes as it can.

Whether or not you should break off the suckers on an indeterminate tomato depends on where you live, and your own personal preference. If you live somewhere that has a longer growing season, I would say gardening zone 6 or higher, then breaking off the suckers is not all that helpful. You have a long enough season that you don’t need to do anything to encourage your tomatoes to stop growing up and start producing. Why not just let them get as big as they can since they will have plenty of time to provide you will boxes and boxes of tomatoes. Personally, the only time I break anything off my indeterminate tomatoes is when we are getting close to the first frost and I want the plant to quit growing.

If you live somewhere that has a shorter growing season, it makes more sense to break off the suckers because it encourages your plant to stop putting energy into growing, and put more energy into ripening the tomatoes. Your plant will end up a little smaller, and your tomatoes will ripen a little earlier. It can improve circulation, which might help prevent disease. It also has the potential to make your plant produce slightly larger tomatoes, but you won’t have as many. Give a little, take a little. So if that is what you want, then keep on plucking those little suckers off your indeterminate plants, and accept my apology for declaring your method as “incorrect”, I only meant to inform. I am certain no one meant to deceive anyone by telling them to break off the suckers, I just want everyone to know which kind of plants they were talking about. Indeterminate NOT determinate.

Phew! Now that I got that off my chest, I feel much better. I just want to make sure you guys are well informed so that you can grow the best tomatoes ever!

Speaking of best tomatoes ever …. If you are serious about your tomatoes, you need to know this. Tomatofest.com has the largest and most impressive selection of organic and heirloom tomatoes I have ever seen. They have over 600 beautiful, unique, and rare varieties of all different colors, sizes, shapes, and flavors. In fact, this year I am trying out a blue tomato for the first time. Yes, blue! You can’t believe some of the stuff they have until you see it with your own eyes. CLICK HERE to visit this incredible organic and heirloom tomato seed supplier that is run by a couple who harvest their own seeds. If you aren’t buying your seeds through these guys, you are truly missing out on some great tomatoes.

Make sure to sign up for my FREE 8 day Tomato Academy. I teach all you tomato freaks how to choose, grow, and sell “high end” tomatoes for big money. Some of mine sell for $3 each! CLICK HERE to check it out.

Then check out my DIY BEEFY tomato cage tutorial, so your plants aren’t laying in the dirt.

And learn how to have a weed free tomato patch by watching this video.

Has anyone else found tomato advice out there that needs to be corrected? or at least clarified?

~Farmer’s Wife

Farmhouse Garden Gardening How To's Preserving The Harvest

The one thing you absolutely MUST do in your garden before 7 AM

I can’t say that I am not a morning person, because I do like the morning time. In fact, my absolute favorite time to be in the garden is super early in the morning just after the sun comes up. It’s so dang quiet! Which is a very rare thing around here. The air is cool and crisp, and it smells …. fresh.

But 7 years ago, Farmer and I started a family. Since then, I have either been pregnant, nursing, or just plain exhausted from chasing the little ones around all day. So morning time is … well …. spent laying in bed with my eyes shut tight until I can no longer ignore the mom, mom, mom, mom, mom laying on the pillow next to me.

But I have learned that no matter how tired I may be, and no matter how many kids I have hanging on my arms, there is one thing I absolutely MUST do in my garden before 7:00 AM.

And that is HARVEST YOUR STUFF!

I think some people don’t realize just how important this is. Think for a moment if your local grocery store kept their romaine lettuce on a shelf next to the cereal instead of in it’s nice little refrigerated section. What do you think it would look like? Taste like? Feel like ….. ew!

Now how about they put their cucumbers inside the warmer in their deli section to cook all day? You gonna pay for those? I’m not!

That is what the sun is doing to your garden! In the middle of the day, your plants are STRESSED OUT! All they can think about is eating all that sunshine and drinking up whatever water is left in the soil. Now you go out around 3:00 PM and chop off one of it’s limbs for your dinner and think nothing of it. Meanwhile, that plant is crying, and whatever vegetable you just harvested is squishy and sad.

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This is ESPECIALLY important if you are selling your produce. The shelf life of your bounty will go down substantially if you pick it in the heat of the day. It was already breaking down before you picked it! And I would be willing to bet that you don’t want to show up to the farmer’s market with droopy raspberries, or mushy tomatoes.

Now I understand that this is not possible 100% of the time. And I am not saying that you can NEVER pick from your garden in the middle of the day. Of course you can! That’s like the best part of having a garden. Being able to walk outside and eat peas straight from the plant, or have a fresh tomato sandwich for your afternoon snack! All I am saying …. no better make that begging … you make it a habit to pick the bulk of your produce in the early morning as often as possible. Your veggies will be crisper, your fruit will be sweeter, and EVERYTHING will last a whole heck of a lot longer.

Thanks for listening to me rant!

~Farmer’s Wife