Goodbye Store-Bought Trellises: Use This Sunny Annual Flower To Support Your Vines Instead

When it comes to growing vining edibles, such as cucumbers, beans, and peas, in a new part of your garden for the first time, you'll have to figure out how you're going to support them. While there are plenty of trellis ideas to maximize your outdoor space, and you do have the option of traditional trellises that you can buy, these can end up getting quite expensive. But there's a better way that can also add sunny annual flowers to your garden at the same time. This means it's not hard to say goodbye to store-bought trellises if you decide that you're going to use sturdy sunflowers as a living trellis to support your vines instead.

If you've ever grown sunflowers, you'll know that certain varieties can get quite tall and have the strongest stems. They have to be sturdy because those sunflower heads can get quite heavy when they eventually fill out with seeds. But they also make the perfect climbing pole for vines such as beans, peas, and cucumbers. Even better, it's not that difficult to put all of this together in your garden. The only thing you have to be mindful of is that sunflowers are allelopathic and contain a certain chemical, known as sesquiterpene lactone, which can stunt the growth of some plants. So, you may have to experiment to see what works best in your garden.

The first thing you want to select is your sunflower variety. Ideally, you want a cultivar that's going to grow straight and tall on a single stem, such as Helianthus annuus 'Sunrich Summer Provence'. This variety can reach a height of 4 to 5 feet, which is perfect for most vining crops. Of course, there are plenty of other varieties of tall sunflowers you can grow in your garden, so just choose the ones you like the best.

After you plant your sunflowers, you can determine whether you want them to be a living trellis immediately or if you want to wait until they've finished blooming. If you would like to plant cucumbers with sunflowers, then you'll need to plant these before your sunflowers get too tall, to prevent those large leaves from creating too much shade. You might even have to cut some of the lower sunflower leaves to let more sun in if your cucumbers are struggling. Pole beans can be planted in the same way, as they'll happily climb up the sunflower stems. Finally, if you want to use the tall woody stems as a trellis for fall-planted peas, wait until after they bloom, remove the flower heads, and plant your peas. In fact, you'll find that peas and sunflowers are an unexpected but effective garden match, and you can even wind some twine around the tall flower stems, so that you have horizontal supports for the peas as well.