Recession trellis
Monday 23 March 2009 - Filed under General
My charismatic thug, akebia quinata, has been growing noticeably daily, sending out new vines in vain, in search of some structure to twine around. The time had come, the time was now. Something had to be done but quick. It had to be both within my budget and extremely limited construction skills. I was trolling local metal fabrication shops without much luck, when I put a call out for ideas on twitter. LeeAnne was able to give me an example of her handiwork using wire meant for concrete reinforcement. Quick trip to Lowe’s, and I was loaded up with ten 4′ x 8′ panels and a box of staples. The whole thing cost me under $70 for 40 feet of trellis. I then some nice men who saw me slowly working on sizing the wire frames to fit in my car cut the panels down with some heavy duty wire cutters.
Installing them couldn’t have been easier. I just had to tap the staples in with a hammer at regular intervals on the fence frame. The “back” of the fence faces my property, so the trellis is standing a couple inches off the planks. If that hadn’t been the case, it would have been necessary to provide some spacers between the wood and the metal.
After less than an hour of work, I had trellis attached, and had the akebia more or less fastened to it until it starts to take hold on its own. Pretty simple stuff. Thanks LeeAnne!
2009-03-23 » megan
23 March 2009 @ 9:51 am
Looks great. That might just make an ideal screen between my yard the neighbor’s–maybe thwart her dogs from running over and raising a ruckus every time I open the damn door.
23 March 2009 @ 6:49 pm
That turned out awesome, great work. Simple and effective & cheap too.
You totally owned the recession with this one.
23 March 2009 @ 8:24 pm
Glad I could help. The mesh does rust a bit (and hopefully if it stains the fence you won’t freak out) but otherwise seems to work well. I’ve got it over my veggie garden (the picture you have) and another set suspended from copper pipe as a bench backdrop. Evergreen clematis is slowly filling in that one.
24 March 2009 @ 6:58 am
You could probably keep it from rusting, if so inclined, by rubbing it down with mineral oil or else a wee spray with a clear coat–while you can still get to it.
I swear I tried to work out in the yard for a few minutes yesterday, but it was just too damn cold!
1 April 2009 @ 7:27 am
[...] quinata is a scary fast grower that I’ve come to rely on for being semi evergreen and for quick trellis cover, Akebia trifoliata, which you can see has groupings of 3 leaves instead of 5 (trifoliata vs [...]