Vertical Gardening: Big Yields in a Tiny Space

My back fence used to do absolutely nothing. Just sitting there, being a fence, looking smug about it. Meanwhile I was cramming tomatoes and beans and squash into a 4×8 raised bed like I was trying to close a suitcase I’d already overfilled. Took me an embarrassingly long time to look up and realize I had about 40 linear feet of perfectly good vertical space going completely to waste.

If you’re gardening in a small space in the Pacific Northwest, vertical gardening is basically how you cheat at the game. More plants, same footprint. Which, if you think about it, is the whole point.

What Actually Grows Well Vertically

Not everything wants to climb, so let’s not pretend otherwise. The winners are pole beans, cucumbers, peas, indeterminate tomatoes, and any squash you’re willing to wrestle a bit. My girls have started calling our cucumber wall “the curtain,” which honestly is a better name than anything I came up with.

Peas especially are doing great right now in April. Cool-season, already thinking about climbing, and they’ll hit a trellis like they’ve been waiting for permission. If you’re not already sowing them against something tall, you’re leaving free food on the table.

Cheap Trellis Options That Actually Work

Here’s where I get to be smug for a second. A trellis from a garden center can run you ten, fifteen, twenty dollars for something that’ll fall over in a Redmond windstorm by June. I’ve tried a few of those. Lesson learned.

What works better and costs almost nothing:

• Bamboo and twine: A bundle of bamboo stakes from McLendon’s is cheap, and cotton twine is practically free. Lash a grid together, zip-tie it to a fence post, done. I’ve had the same setup running for three seasons.
• Cattle panel: This is the move if you want something that lasts. One panel from a farm supply store runs around $30 and holds up to basically anything. Bent into an arch, it becomes a tunnel that shades nothing and grows everything. I’ve had cucumbers and beans on the same panel at the same time.
• Remesh panel: Even cheaper than cattle panel. Grab a concrete reinforcing mesh panel from Home Depot for under $10 and zip-tie it to T-posts. It’s ugly. It works extremely well.

I once spent real money on one of those decorative obelisk things. Pretty. Held exactly one tomato plant before it slowly collapsed sideways over the course of August. So there’s that.

The Footprint Math

A standard indeterminate tomato sprawling on the ground needs maybe 9 square feet of bed space, minimum. Trained up a stake or a sturdy cage against a trellis, that same plant occupies maybe 2 square feet of bed. That’s not nothing. Across a whole raised bed, that difference is the reason I can grow tomatoes AND have room for basil AND still squeeze in a pepper plant my younger daughter insists on despite not actually eating peppers.

Pole beans over bush beans is the same math. Bush beans are wide and low and done in one go. Pole beans climb 6 feet, produce all season long, and take up about a third of the horizontal space. No contest if you’re working small.

Training and Keeping Things Tidy

Vertical gardening isn’t just stick a trellis in the ground and walk away, though that would be ideal. You do have to guide things. Cucumbers need a little encouragement the first couple weeks, just tucking their tendrils onto the trellis every few days until they figure out what you want. Tomatoes need to be tied up every week or two as they grow, and if you’re doing a single-stem cordon (which I do for space reasons), you need to pinch suckers consistently or the whole thing gets away from you fast.

I use strips of old t-shirts for tying. Free, soft on the stems, and I have an endless supply because apparently I can never throw anything away. Soft plant ties work great too if you actually want to look like you have your life together.

One More Thing About Shade

This is the part people forget until it’s too late. Vertical structures create shade, and shade moves through the day. Before you install anything permanent, watch where the sun hits your bed at noon. A 6-foot trellis on the south side of your garden will shade everything behind it. Put it on the north side of the bed and you get the structure without sacrificing light for your lower-growing plants.

I did it wrong the first year. Of course I did.

Anyway, if you’ve got a fence, a wall, a deck railing, anything vertical, it’s growing space you’re not using yet. Might as well turnip the production. (Sorry. I couldn’t help it.)

Photo by Zoe Richardson on Unsplash