Obviously, we’ve been working a lot in our front yard. Well, maybe obvious to us because we’ve put in the work, but not so obvious to our neighbors who still have to look at an eyesore of a yard. It seems like it has taken us forever just to remove all the ugly stuff that was there when we moved in, from bright white landscaping rock, to overgrown rosemary, to weeds. Well, we finally got to a point where we were ready to add something back in, and we happened to snag a couple of Red Flame grape vines from Costco.
Once we purchased the vines, we were a little bit ahead of ourselves. We needed something for them to grow on before we could plant them. We searched the internet for various DIY designs for grape trellises and took the best bits and pieces to create a trellis that suited our needs. Here are the materials we used:
- Two 4×4 posts, 8 feet long each
- Two 2×2 posts, 8 feet long each
- Wood preservative
- 10 eyelet bolts, with nuts, about 1/4 inch in diameter
- 20 1/4 inch washers
- 5 turnbuckles, about 5 inches long when open
- 14 guage wire
The first thing we did was treat the posts with a wood preservative. Our posts are redwood, since it holds up well outdoors, so we chose a preservative with a redwood stain to it. Specifically, Preservawood in Pacific Redwood. Preservawood is a low-VOC formula, so you won’t be breathing in horrible fumes while you treat the wood and it won’t leach toxic chemicals into the soil once you have the posts placed.
Next, we had to set the posts in the ground. We wanted them sunk down two feet, so six feet would be exposed for the trellis. Using a post hole digger, we dug down about 28 inches for each post, and spaced the holes about four feet apart (so the trellis is 12 feet long, from end to end). The two 4x4s were used for the outside supports, while the 2x2s were used on the inside.
The reason we dug the holes a bit deeper than two feet is that the method we decided to use for setting them involved placing a few inches of gravel on the bottom, then several more inches around the bottom of the post. But where would we get gravel?
We just happened to have some lying around. Anyway, we put four inches of gravel at the bottom of each hole, then placed the posts in, used a level to make sure they were straight, then filled around the bottom of the post with gravel for another six inches or so. Then, we packed the rest of the hole with the dirt we dug out of it, periodically using the level to make sure the post was still straight.
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Next, we drilled holes in the posts to stretch the wire across. We planned on five wires, starting about two feet off the ground and ending about two inches from the top of each post, so we spaced the holes approximately evenly over this space.
On the outside posts, we put eyelet bolts through and secured them each with a nut. We put a 1/4 inch washer on either side of each bolt in an attempt to not damage the wood as we tightened the nut. We planned to just run the wire through the holes in the two smaller posts, since the larger, outer posts were really the major supports for the wire.
Next, we attached a wire to each eyelet (each of these wires was about half the length of the trellis as a whole, so maybe six feet, give or take, with a little extra just in case). We threaded the wire through each eyelet, bent it with about a three inch overlap, and coiled the overlap around the other side of the wire using a vice grip. They all looked like this when we were done.
Since each of the wires we threaded through the eyelets was about half the length of the trellis, we needed a way for the left to meet the right in the middle, and we decided to use a turnbuckle for each set of wires. Maybe Congress could use a few turnbuckles?
In case you were wondering what a turnbuckle is, here is a description from Wikipedia:
A turnbuckle, stretching screw or bottlescrew is a device for adjusting the tension or length of ropes, cables, tie rods, and other tensioning systems. It normally consists of two threaded eyelets, one screwed into each end of a small metal loop, one with a left-hand thread and the other with a right-hand thread. The tension can be adjusted by rotating the loop, which causes both eyelets to be screwed in or out simultaneously, without twisting the eyelets or attached cables,
We coiled a wire from the left side to one end of the turnbuckle and a wire from the right side to the other. We pulled them as taught as well could initially, but then we still had the ability to adjust the tension even more by rotating the loop on the turnbuckle.
So there you have a pretty basic trellis!
After all that work we still had to plant the grapes. We tilled the soil with a Mantis tiller, added some soil amendment, and tilled again. The we just dug a couple of holes and popped the plants in. Finally, we untied the vines from the bamboo support from the nursery pot and started training them along the new trellis with a little string. I think it looks pretty nice, and has a lot of potential if we don’t kill the grapes and they keep growing up the trellis.
Of course, the rest of the front still looks pretty dreadful. Baby steps!
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So are these going to be grapes for eating? You guys are going gangbusters out there. Perhaps I’m due for a visit one of these days.
Yup, grapes for eating. They are the red kind you get in the regular grocery store. I think Steve was somewhat interest in Concord grapes, because we live in Concord (but not that Concord), but really what would we have done with those? Making your own grape juice might sound good but with just two vines I doubt we’d get even a glass out of it.