6-Plus Ways to Make a Bean Trellis for Free

Beans can be categorized in many ways. We have beans we eat young, fresh, and tender. We have beans that we let mature and dry for winter storage. Regardless, for growers/gardeners, it often reduces to choosing between bush beans versus pole beans.

Bush beans stay relatively low to the ground, take up more real estate, and are very convenient for factory farms likely to be harvesting with machinery. Like determinate tomatoes, they put out their crop all at once and quickly expire thereafter, also making large-scale harvesting more sensible.

Pole beans vine up trellises, using vertical space instead of square footage, so they often put out far more beans for the area they occupy. Like indeterminate tomatoes, they will continue to provide beans until the plant is killed by the first hard frost in the fall. This type of harvesting, though, must be done by hand.

Source: GrowVeg/YouTube

For home gardeners, pole beans usually make the most sense. They occupy less space and provide much more food. But, they need a trellis to climb. So, having a few methods for building a trellis cheaply comes in handy.

1. The T-Post Tight Wire

For gardeners that have a couple of tall T-posts (as used for barbed wire fences) hanging around, a bean trellis is a really quick project. Drive the two T-posts with a slightly angling away from each other and run a piece of wire or a doubled-up piece of twine between the tops of the posts. Then, run a piece of twine between the bottoms of the posts, just a few inches above the ground. Twine can be strung loosely between the top and the bottom to create a great trellis.

2. The Bamboo Tipi

Source: GrowVeg/YouTube

For gardeners who have access to bamboo, a sturdy bean trellis isn’t hard to build. Get a few bamboo poles that are eight to ten feet long, and tie them together near the top. Then, arrange the poles in a circle with a diameter of about three feet. Plant a couple of pole beans at the base of each post, and they’ll climb right up them. If bamboo is hard to come by, but long, straight(ish) sticks are available, that’ll do just fine.

3. The Fence Trellis

Fences often get overlooked as usable vertical spaces in the garden, but they are perfect. They are generally sturdy enough to handle the weight of a couple of dozen bean vines clinging to them, and they require little to no work. Wire fencing or chain-link fencing can work as they are. A wooden fence can work with a few screws put along the top and bottom with twine strung up and down to give the vine’s tendrils something to grab.

4. Other Plants

Sometimes it helps to think of other plants as trellises. Many Native American tribes planted the three sisters: corn, beans, and squash. The squash helped to provide ground cover and protection (they have spiky stems and leaves) for the taller plants, the beans provided nitrogen for the hungrier plants, and the tall cornstalks acted like a trellis for the beans. Giant sunflowers can be used similarly, with beans climbing right up them as they tower some ten feet.

5. Between Two Porch Posts

For those growing container gardens, using porch posts can be a great way to create a bean trellis and utilize vertical space. Containers with pole beans can be set on the base of a porch post to climb up it, or two porch posts can be connected with string or wire to create something similar to the T-post trellises. The beans can be planted in a couple of pots along the way, and they’ll spread out on the porch post trellis.

6. A Standing Ladder

While rushing out to buy a ladder might not be the most economical way to make a trellis, using an old one, particularly a wooden one that’s been stowed away for several years, might be a great idea. Just be sure to anchor the ladder down to the ground well so that it doesn’t blow over in a thunderstorm. That’d be a garden tragedy. For crafty-carpentry folk, knocking together one of these with pallet wood would be pretty easy as well.

Found Object Trellises

Come to think of it, ladders aren’t the potential trellises that might be lying around the shed, garage, or even house. Old mattress coils have been used as trellises. Crib rails might be used as trellises. An old piece of lattice from a long-forgotten project might be tucked away in the shed. Old doors with no windows or screens broken out of them can be trellises. Metal headboards can become trellises. An old clothesline in the yard can become a bean trellis.

The (author-biased) point is that pole beans are the best for home gardens, and there are so many ways to make trellises for them that that should not be of great concern. The trellis, rather, should be seen as a moment to be creative and fun.

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