Ideas for Designing a Green Bean Trellis

Simple Tripod

• A tripod is an easy trellis to make, and requires few materials. All you need are three sturdy wooden dowels, bamboo canes or metal rods. Bury one end of each rod in the ground about 6 or 8 inches deep, then bring the top ends together and secure them with twine, so that they form a teepee shape. Use more than three stakes to make a taller, larger teepee shape, and your children can play inside it, once the beans have covered the trellis.

Wall Trellis

• If you have a large, empty, sunny wall on your home, barn, shed or garage, consider a wall trellis. You can purchase a flat trellis and simply lean it against your wall, but you may find that most ready-made wall trellises are fairly small. When you make your own, you can cover the entire wall. One way is to attach a series of screws up, down, and across your wall, then wrap around the screws to form a grid.

Fence

• If you have a fence in an area that gets plenty of sun, there's no need to make or purchase a trellis, as pole beans will grow right up your fence. Chain-link and fences with open posts or rails work best, but you can even make a wooden privacy fence work by tying lengths of twine at the tops of the slats. Let the twine hang down to the ground. Give new bean shoots a little help finding the twine, and the plants will scramble up the strings, eventually covering your fence.

A-Frame

• An A-frame trellis can be customized to fit your particular garden plot, with a short length for smaller plots and a longer length for bigger plots. An A-frame is similar to a tripod trellis, but can extend as far as you like in any direction, as opposed to the round or triangle shape of a tripod. There are many ways an A-frame trellis can be designed and built. Basically, you use lumber, stakes or canes to create a long row of A-frame structures. Connect them across the top and bottom with lumber or canes, and add twine or wire across portions of the A-frame to give beans more opportunities to climb.

Good to Know

• To grow their best, green beans need plenty of sunlight -- at least six to eight hours of full sun each day -- so position your trellis in a sunny location. Pole beans do not like to have their roots disturbed, so instead of starting seeds indoors, wait until the danger of frost has passed and plant the seeds directly into the ground at the base of your trellis.