Growing many things vertically is a great method for people like me who want to grow as many veggies as possible without wasting any space. The great space hogs of the garden are the vines. Cucumbers can easily take over many square feet of garden space thus making is a perfect candidate for growing vertically. Last year I grew my cucumbers on a tepee which worked pretty good. The problem that I had was that it was a little tricky to harvest because of so many prickly vines winding around the tepee making it tough to find the cucumbers. This year I am trying a new method of growing cucumbers; growing them up a rope, similar to the methods I use for my tomatoes. Since I had already built tomato gallows and I had some extra space, I used the existing structure to hang ropes up for my cucumbers. (See my post here about how I built my structures.)
I planted my cucumbers about 6 inches apart. When they germinated, I stuck in a stake next to the plant, attached a rope to the stake, and tied it at the top of my tomato gallows.
As the cucumbers started to grow, I continued to gently wrap the plants around the rope.
Cucumbers will first grow off one main stem and then will make more “arms”, similar to tomatoes. Since I plan to use cucumbers both for fresh eating and pickling, I want to ensure that there will be plenty. As the off-shoots of the vine grow, I also wrap them around the rope.
The vines will grab onto the the rope but I also make sure that they are wrapped around so that they don’t fall down later when they are laden with fruit.
My cucumbers are happily growing up their ropes and starting to produce which I am very excited about!
This post is linked to Like a Mustard Seed, Your Green Resource, Simple Lives Thursday, and Little House in the Suburbs.
3:30 pm on July 17th, 2012
I love this idea. My garden space is pretty small so this would work well. My cucs are planted by a stone wall and I’ve been trying to train them up the stones. They don’t have a lot to grab onto though and they keep wanting to wind up the nearby tomato plant. I’ll check out your link on how to make a gallows
7:50 pm on July 19th, 2012
great idea. Will share with my hubs for next year.
I pinned it too!!
8:18 am on July 20th, 2012
Thanks for the pin Jessica!
8:20 am on July 20th, 2012
Kristel, cucumbers do like to grow up something they can wrap around. Thanks for stopping by!
10:50 pm on July 22nd, 2012
my cucumbers are taking over the garden. I am so un-handy but that seems easy enough!