Quick Rig Lower and Lean Trellis
An easy to deploy commercial-off-the-shelf lower and lean trellis system for indeterminate tomatoes and other vining vegetables subject to the hard pruning technique.
For the uninitiated, growing tomatoes can turn from a fun productive venture to a burdensome rats nest of ever growing vines. Tomatoes come in two broad categories: determinate and indeterminate. As the name suggests, a determinate tomato eventually stops growing based on its genetics and sets fruit all at once. These are not the norm. Most tomato varieties are indeterminate meaning they will continue to grow over their lifespan, which usually ends at first frost. Moreover these tomato varieties will continue to set fruit as the vine grows. These vines can exceed well over twenty feet in length. As you can imagine, such growth can become unruly and hard to maintain, literally taking over a garden. These aren’t the tomatoes you want to grow on your apartment balcony in a container. Furthermore, if left unpruned, you will get not only one vine, but many vines, as these tomato plants produce what’s referred to as “suckers,” which essentially start another vine. These suckers are found at the junction of the tomato plant’s compound leaves and the main vine or stem, often referred to as the “leader.” Grower’s will choose to prune off these suckers as they “suck” energy away from the plant setting fruit. By maintaining a single leader, the plant’s energy is focused on fruit production. Moreover, because of how indeterminate tomatoes grow, fruit will continually set on the newest leaves furthest down the leader. Therefore, once old fruit is harvested, that section of the plant will no longer be productive and diverts energy. Grower’s will also choose to prune this old growth off as well. Over time, this creates a long empty vine, or “cord,” that can be more easily managed than an unpruned plant. This pruning of all suckers and old growth is known as the hard pruning technique.
So now that we have an unproductive ever lengthening cord that just takes up space, how do we manage it? While various techniques exist, there’s really only one that’s efficient, cost effective, and not overly complicated: lower and lean. The name “lower and lean” comes from how growers will keep suspended only the productive section of the vine at a constant manageable height, while “lowering” and then “leaning” the cord on the ground. Instead of simply leaning the cord on the ground, some growers will choose to coil it right under the productive section of the plant for additional space saving. By keeping the productive section of the plant suspended at a manageable height, pruning and harvesting is made easy. This technique may be hard to imagine, so I encourage you to look up some videos on it. The focus of the rest of this post will be on a trellis system that facilitates such techniques while also being easy to rig and de-rig.
Many home-grown systems and even commercial systems are difficult to set up, require crafting custom pieces (e.g. cutting lumber) and are quite permanent. I decided I wanted a system that uses affordable commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) parts, is quick to rig (assemble and deploy), and highly portable. I can’t stress COTS parts enough. Sure you can bend metal and cut wood to make a trellis system, but who really has time for that when the focus should be on growing? So let’s go over the bill of materials in pretty picture format.
At a high level, a lower and lean trellis system is simply a clothes line. Yep, that’s right. Ok, it’s a little more complicated than that, but in spirit it’s the same. You basically need a cable to suspend string from that wraps around the tomato plant to train it upward and something to hold said cable up. The big thing to keep in mind here is that if you plan to trellis multiple plants and plan on them being productive, the cable will have to hold quite a bit of weight. So our problem to solve is a suspension system that can be quickly set up and taken down, while not being flimsy garbage. Oh, and did I mention COTS parts?
So up first is what's going to hold the cable up, two metal posts that you can drive in the ground with a mallet. Done. A set of two is $30.
Next, you need a cable. I’m all about over engineering things, so a cable rated to 340 lbs and vinyl coated to hold up to the elements will do the trick. As a bonus, if you buy it as a kit, someone else figured out how to make it hook up to stuff for you.
Ok, so now we have two posts and a cable with eyelets on the end, how do we suspend said cable between the posts and secure it? Well, the part where the cable meets the post was definitely the biggest head scratcher. Sure you could do something stupid like run the cable through one of the pre-drilled holes in the post, but that sounds like a great way to damage the cable, while requiring copious amounts of lube to run it through. So when I think of easy running cables (no lube required), I think of pulleys, but my options at Lowe’s were limited and I hated the additional complexity on top of an additional point of failure. I just needed something smooth and track-like to keep the cable in place. And then it hit me staring at all the junk a la carte the cable kit came with. The metal thingy the that forms the eyelet (ok, I know it’s called a thimble) would fit perfectly over the top of the post and it was already designed to channel the cable. Fucking wizard.
So you may be thinking, how does that help one attach the cable to the post, in fact, you may have thought attaching the cable to the post was easy, just affix an anchor to the post via one of the predrilled holes and voila! Well… you’re wrong. Why?? because physics says you’re wrong unless you want a super saggy sure to fail trellis system. What you need to do is track the cable over the post and then secure it to the ground so you can pull tension on it. Lot’s of tension. So in order to accomplish this, we need an anchor and of course, why not a big one?
Cool. We have an anchor system; we have a cable; we just need to attach the two. This is where the final bit of sophistry comes in. We could try to simply fasten each end with a predetermined tension and hope its enough or we can build in some sort of flexibility. I like flexibility. Flexibility is good. Hence the requirement of a turnbuckle.
However, since we’re dealing with eyelets from the cables, anchors, and one end of the turnbuckle, we need something to connect them. The most cheap and effective way I could come up with is screw-pin shackles.
Notice the choice of stainless steel for components. We want this system to last. Finally, we need something for the plants to actual grow up and while there’s many solutions out there, the twine spools below are actually made to serve this purpose.
Now that I have done the heavy lifting for you, I’ll show you how to set it all up.
Step one, pound in the posts using a pounding instrument of your choice. Your milage will vary based on what you choose and how how hard the ground is. If you struggle to put in the post and find yourself holding a 15 lb sledge hammer, your garden may have other problems you should deal with first. Although, if you get it in, you can probably hang from the cable once you install it which would be pretty cool. Disclaimer: I’m not liable for your dumb decision making.
Next, affix the thimble to the top of each post. I had to bend the little tab thing on the post with some pliers first. It actually worked out to help hold the thimble in place.
After doing this, screwing the anchors into the ground is the next logical choice. Logic however, appears not to be a universal concept. Oh, and these anchors go deep, so unless you're putting them in a foot of loose sand or you spend too much time in the gym (growing arms instead of food), you’ll need something for extra leverage.
Step whatever we’re on is putting the cable together from the kit. There’s no instructions so it assumes you’re not an idiot but if you’re like me I still looked it up to be sure. Pro tip: don’t cut the zip-ties until after you’ve made the first eyelet. For this particular kit, I used a ratchet and a 11 mm driver.
It should look something like the following if you did it right. I thought using three of the fasteners was overkill, so I only used two. Also, it might not be as obvious as I’d hope it should be for you, but only do one end since you don’t know how much cable you’re going to need. Also, don’t try to pre-measure because that’s a surefire way to get it wrong.
Next up we need to shackle the cable to one of the ground anchors using one of the screw-pin shackles. Easy.
Now that one end of the cable is secure, route it over the nearest post via the metal thingy and then over the far post in the same way. Use the eyelet of the far ground anchor to route the cable through in order to help control it so you can fashion the cable eyelet on that end. However, before you fashion the eyelet you need to figure out where to do it along the cable. To help judge this, connect the turnbuckle using the other screw-pin shackle and unscrew each end of the turnbuckle to near max extension. Pull a good amount of tension on the cable and figure out where it meets the free end of the turnbuckle. If you fashion the eyelet at this point, you probably will still have too much sag on the cable even when using the turnbuckle to pull more tension. Therefore, fashion the eyelet roughly two inches further up the cable. It should take a lot of force to pull enough tension to then hook it to the turnbuckle, but in doing so, you’ll prevent an excessive amount of sag. The cable should be very taut if done right without needing additional tension via the turnbuckle. If necessary, use a few turns on the turnbuckle to increase tension, but ideally this will be done at a later point when there’s weight on the cable from the vines. I also recommend not cutting off the excess cable and instead braiding it around itself. This way when you want to redeploy the system you can increase the span if so desired.
The finished product should look like the ones in the image below. I have two of them set up. The twine spools simply hook onto the cable and then you simply run the twine to the ground and secure it the plant or to the ground. I chose to secure it to the ground with a lawn staple. If you look closely at the image below, you can see two of these spools set up with twine ran to the ground for two cucumber plants. At the end of the season, just de-rig the system by unhooking the cable from the anchors, unscrew the anchors, and pull out the poles. The modularity of it allows for spans as long as the cable you choose will allow. Leave any feedback and improvements in the comments.
Now grow free!
Looks more stable than our twine and bamboo sticks! Ha!
👏 impressive!