Want to get more out of your garden? Grow up!

I am very thankful that I am fortunate enough to have a fairly large backyard which also has great light. It's north-facing but it's big enough that it is not shaded by the house, so the fence that you see in the photos is actually south-facing. All of my beds are arranged at the back of the yard. This includes three raised beds and one in-ground bed. 

While I have a generous yard, it is not a farm by any stretch. So in planning my garden, I knew that the footprint of the yard alone would not be big enough to fit everything I wanted to grow. This is where you need to get creative. And vertical.

By planting upward and getting creative with various forms of trellising, you can greatly expand your growing room. This is how I squeeze every square foot out of my garden:

1. Find tall and climbing varieties. My absolute FAVOURITE things to grow in the garden are beans and peas. The flavour and texture (and beauty!) of freshly picked beans and peas almost make them seem like a different vegetable than the ones you find at the super market. Other vertical veggies include cucumbers, some squash, and tomatoes. I'll have another post to talk more about varieties of edibles to grow vertically.
2. Trellis your beds. Each of my raised beds has a trellis approximately 8 feet tall on the back. On these trellises, I grow beans and peas. They LOVE it! The get all the sun they need and they don't shade anything below. 
3. Trellis your fence. I have a 6 foot tall net trellis stretching the length of my backyard. I can plant in the soil at the base of the fence, so I have several upcycled old nursery pots which I have placed at the base of this trellis. I think at my last count, I had about 14 ten-gallon pots. I have grown beans, cucumbers, and squash on this trellis.
4. Trellis within your beds and pots. I have put trellises within beds and pots with leftover material that I have lying around, just for the sake of squeezing just a few more cucumbers out of the season.
5. Trellis posts. Do you have a pergola, arch, or other vertical hardscaping that might lend itself to some climbers? I have placed several upcycled plant pots around the base of the pergola in our yard. I wrapped the posts with old metal mesh for my grapes to climb. I also tied thick natural twine up other posts for (more!) beans to climb.
6. Get creative with your materials! I have made trellises with anything that I've had on hand- bamboo poles, old metal mesh, nylon mesh, string mesh, and old branches. I try whenever possible to use materials I have on hand so that I am not buying something new. I even have a couple of trellises which I constructed by weaving old pear tree watershoots which I pruned off of my trees during their rehabilitation. Look around for something tall or climbable; you might be surprised at what you can find.

Now, your homework after reading this post is to go outside and look up. Get inspired and see where you might put your new trellis.