What is a trellis, and what food plants grow best on one?

A trellis is an upright frame your climbing plants grab onto as they grow — so they go up instead of sprawling across the bed. In a raised garden bed it's the single easiest way to double what you can grow in the same footprint: the climbers take the sky, and the ground level stays free for everything else.

What food plants grow best on a trellis?

The happiest climbers in an Australian veggie patch are peas, beans, cucumbers and tomatoes — all of them naturally want to go up, and all of them crop harder when they do.

• Peas and snow peas — cool-season champions. They cling on by themselves with little tendrils and need almost no training.
• Climbing beans — the classic. One packet of seeds up a trellis out-produces a whole row of bush beans.
• Cucumbers — off the ground they get better airflow, fewer fungal problems, and dead-straight fruit that's easy to spot before it turns into a marrow.
• Tomatoes — indeterminate (vining) varieties will climb all season with a little tying-in as they go.
• Pumpkins and squash — smaller varieties like butternut will happily climb, saving you metres of rambling vine.
• Passionfruit — a longer-term resident, but a well-fed vine on a sturdy trellis is one of the most productive things in a backyard.

Why does growing up beat growing along the ground?

Four reasons, and they compound: space — a climber on a trellis uses a strip of bed barely 20cm deep; airflow — leaves dry faster after rain, which means less powdery mildew and fewer fungal headaches in humid weather; cleaner fruit — nothing sitting on damp mix where slugs and snails cruise; and easier picking — the harvest hangs at eye level instead of hiding under a canopy.

Do I need to attach a trellis to my raised garden bed?

It's much better if you do. A free-standing trellis in a bed of light, free-draining potting mix will lean the first time a loaded cucumber vine meets a windy afternoon. Our planter boxes and raised garden beds with a trellis come with the trellis bolted to the frame of the bed itself — solid timber, no wobble, no staking into the mix. You can also add a trellis to any Corrogarden bed later; it attaches to the bed frame with the fasteners included.

Which side of the bed should the trellis go on?

The south side, in almost every Australian backyard. The sun tracks through the north, so a trellis on the southern edge means the climbers catch full sun without shading the rest of the bed. (If you actually want some afternoon shade — say for lettuce in a Queensland summer — put it on the west and let the climbers earn their keep as a shade sail.)

More garden guides: determinate vs indeterminate tomatoes · companion planting · how deep should your bed be?

What should I plant right now? Our free garden calendar shows what suits your postcode this month — and which pests to watch for. Ready to grow? Browse our garden beds with a trellis or design yours with the garden bed builder.