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Learn how easy it is to build an affordable and easy DIY Trellis for your fruit, vegetable, or flower garden. Simple cattle panels create strong and long-lasting garden trellis archways that you can use year after year.

A DIY trellis covered in green bean vines

Do you love to garden but don’t have a large space? Same! When you have maxed out the entire area, and can’t expand any further, it’s time to grow UP.

Cucumbers, green beans, and peas all have to grow up and over something, and I’ll be honest in that I have gone through so many variations of netting, twine, supports, and wooden trellises.  

The netting gets tangled, the twine lasts maybe one season if you’re lucky, and the wooden trellises have been known to rot. Thankfully, there is an easy and affordable solution that even folds flat to store at the end of the season – cattle panel trellises!

DIY Garden Trellis Supplies

How to Build a DIY Trellis

  1. First, measure how tall you want the trellis to be.
  2. Using bolt cutters, cut the cattle panel to that length. This will create one side of the trellis.
  3. Remove the horizontal wire at the very base of the cut piece so that all is left is the vertical pokeys to go into the soil.  
  4. Repeat steps 2 & 3 above to create the other side of the trellis.
  5. Using wire or zip ties, join the two panels at the top, creating a hinge (tent/A frame).
  6. Cut a piece from the leftover panel that is 4 rectangles by 2 rectangles.
  7. Lift your joined trellis into the garden and make sure the base is sunk deep into the soil.  
  8. Take the piece of panel you cut in step 6 and insert it into the middle of the trellis. Attach each end to the sides with wire or zip ties.DIY garden trellis in a planting box

DIY vegetable trellis

Why Build Cattle Panel Vegetable Trellises

  1. Ease! Altogether, I think it maybe took about an hour to build two of these, including going to the store to get the fencing. 
  2. Longevity! There are loads of “how to’s” out there on using sticks and twine and odds and ends to create a garden trellis for free, but frankly, I didn’t want to mess with this crap every year, store a bunch of busted sticks, and re-twine them each spring.
  3. Storage! These fold flat at the end of your growing season to be stored in a garden shed or against the back wall of your house.

cucumbers with a garden trellis in a planting box

These homemade garden supports get quite the workout during our growing season. In late winter we plant peas in one of the beds. As things start to heat up, green beans get planted in another raised bed. When the peas die, we pull those and plant cucumbers in that bed. 

woman standing in a planter box with a garden trellis covered in green beans

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 green beans in buckets on steps

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About Sarah

Helping you serve up budget-friendly sustainable recipes with a side of balanced living.
Come for the food. Stay for the snark.

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8 Comments

  1. Love this idea! My bean tripod last year was pathetic and fell over multiple times. I have impulse purchased cattle panels and am eagerly awaiting their arrival! Your post was extremely timely as I have just received new and exciting beans. Happy dance!

      1. My panels came!! My joy over this is entirely disproportionate but they were late and then got lost in transit and I had to take a refund and there was serious moping. But they arrived this morning! By stealth as the delivery guy obviously wanted to limit his interaction with unknown potential plaguies. I have no clue when he delivered them except probably this morning… Managed to re-arrange payment and now I can build my trellises and plant exciting beans! Sorry I’m a bit over excited. We are on lockdown in a small Scottish seaside town so any potential entertainment is waaaaay over stimulating atm.
        Hope things are ok on your end and your peoples healthy.

      2. Yahooooo! I’m so excited for you and you better send me a photo when they’re all done. Promise!

        We’re healthy and fine, though a bit stir crazy.

  2. I love the simplicity of this. I only need mine to last for three summers, well, possible two or four, so I just rigged up something wonky from crap laying around this year. If the garden goes well and I actually use up/store all that we harvest, then I will consider investing in something more permanent. Then again, we could totally move these with us if we wanted to.

  3. You’re right, the wooden ones do rot. (Raises hand from experience…) This is a much more affordable, sturdy alternative.