It’s that time of year already to get the ol’ garden started. I don’t know about you, but the year is just flying by for me. I can’t believe it’s the middle of freaking March!!!
Anyways, I have 4′ x 4′ raised beds in my veggie garden, and no matter what I do, my squash plants always outgrow them and run all over the gravel paths in between the beds. I’ve even planted one right smack in the middle of a bed, and it still outgrew it and ran all over the place. It makes it very difficult to walk around the beds without getting scratched up by squash leaves and stems (those suckers are MEAN) and do the watering (I don’t have a watering system in the beds, so I have to do the hose dragging thing) breaking off leaves, stems and squash in the process.
I thought about just doing a trellis, but squash plants typically aren’t big climbers, and their stems and leaves are big and heavy and will break off if you look cross-eyed at them. Not good candidates to attempt tying and/or stringing onto a trellis! But, I thought maybe they could handle climbing up a gentle grade on some sort of rack.
The materials and directions below are for one rack that will fit a 4′ x 4′ raised garden bed, but these can be made to any size you want and do not have to only be used in a raised garden bed. They can be used anywhere in your garden where you want to save precious gardening space and keep your squash plants from taking over.
Materials:
1 – 4′ x 4′ pallet
2 – 2′ 2 x 4’s
12 – 3 1/4″ galvanized nails
Directions:
Start by figuring out the angle of the finished rack so when it is placed in the raised bed, it will cover 2/3 to 3/4 of the south end of the bed. The idea here is to plant the squash on the north end of the bed, and as they grow they will climb up the side of the rack following the sun in the south. I cut my pallets to 3′ and 2 x 4’s to 2′, which gives the rack approximately 45 degree angle. I may lessen the rack angle once the squash plants start growing if it seems too steep.
Nail the 2 x 4’s at one end on either side of the pallet to make a rack.
Now you’re in business. Place your squash rack in your garden and get planting!
Since I just thought this up, I don’t have pretty pictures of the end result as of yet. Because of that, I even considered waiting until the end of the season to post this, but I figured I would share it now since this is optimal time to plant squash and this is sure to help people with similar squash plant dilemmas. Once everything grows in, I will take pictures and update this post. In the meantime, refer to the picture below to get an idea of what I’m hoping the end result will be:
I’m planting the squash on the left to the north in the hopes that they will follow the sun in the south up the pallet instead of running all over the garden paths. I’m also planting marigolds on the south side underneath the pallet because marigolds are supposed to help deter aphids and other pesky bugs who like to ruin squash.
I hope you found this post helpful and will save you from a summer of tripping over your squash plants! Please let me know what you think and if you have any questions!
Michelle
I'd love to hear what you think!