Cattle Panels

Going to try cattle panels this year for supports.
So much easier.

Paul

We use them for Cherry tomatoes.

Cattle panels are a great help in the garden, I use them to support tomatoes (sometimes), pole beans, and cucumbers.

I've cut most of mine into 8' lengths, and for pole beans I stand them on end. I've got one 16-footer that I always make an arch out of, then have either pole beans or cukes grow up it from both ends and meet in the middle. Picking is easy when the cukes or beans are dangling right in front of your face, and even better - under that arch is a summertime shady place in the garden, and that's where my plastic chair and jug of lemonade goes. :>)

Cattle panels often get dinged up by forklifts, and farmers don't want them if there's any broken wire that could hurt their stock. When I'm looking for them I always ask if a hardware store or farm supply store has any slightly damaged ones. I picked up two at Lowe's last year for $5 each!

I have several that I multi-purpose. Peas early, leaving a space for tomatoes later. When the peas quit I plant pole beans where they used to be and harvest beans and tomatoes the rest of the summer. (Ozark: I have cukes on another trellis, but they would work too.)

We use them primarily for cherry tomatoes too but I am trying a cucumber too this year. So much easier to just weave those branches in and out, and can pick easier too from both sides which is great.

Cattle panels are a staple around here. So many uses! I use mine for cherry toms too.

Aren;t the panels wonderful, a neighbor was getting rid of some and I took them. i feel like I found the answer to many garden problems.
I grow a lot of the japanese yard long green beans, the panels are perfect; two 8-footers, tien together at the short end, and formed as a teepee,and a pack of seeds and I;m going.
I never would have thought about using them until I was at a friend;s in sothern Calif and she had cukes and melons growing on a panel.
For my tomatoes, I place one panel in back of the young plants, I use metal fence posts to anchor them, and place a second panel 12 inches away from the first and anchor to more posts. as the tomatoes grow, they grow between the panels, nice and straight and tall.
I love the panels.

About 10 years ago I spotted some at one of the stores and anytime I see anything I haven't seen before, I immediately start thinking about ways I could use them. Well, I bought 3 of them and made a hoophouse. It is 8 feet wide at the bottom and just over 6ft tall in the middle. I bought visquine. sic. and put over it, and had a nice greenhouse which extended my season on both ends. I did not heat it. So, the next year, I got 2 more and added them to make 5 and a hh approximately 20 feet long. I started out bale gardening in it. Running bales down both sides, and planting tomatoes in them. (We took the cover off in the winter) It worked out pretty good. I used it for several years, but now it has our boat parked in it. Tried leaving the cover over it in the winter and that didn't do well, as the weight of the snow, which had ice layers every so many inches, caved it in. So Bob took it down, laid the panels out in the yard and walked on them and they straightened right out. He put them back up and uses it to park a lot of the things in it or as I said, put the boat in there.

One year I even had a cement block raised bed with just flowers in it with the tomatoes. That was really neat. Loved those flowers. Again, some I had never grown before. So, yes, the panels are very useful.

I am going to try and find some used or damaged ones, That was a good tip Ozark.