[tubebender]

I’m 76 and thought I had seen everything garden wise but the engineering on your plot has just left me slack jawed!!! I look at those livestock panels every time I go to our local feed store wondering what the heck I could do with them. Do you tie those melons to the wire with something or do they hang on after getting ripe?

[Red_Devil 232]

I am with you tubebender! JustaDumbBlonde and her husband have got quite a setup and system. She had posted some pictures of her garden last year and those pictures were the reason I went with the landscape fabric on my little garden.

[JustaDumbBlonde]

Believe it or not I haven't supported the melons in any way so far and they are doing really well. The stems are really quite stout, and they are actually more likely to break early when they are tender. Last year I grew some spaghetti squash and sugar baby watermelons on this type of trellis. Whatever the crop, the fruit seem to settle in a good spot kinda naturally. When these vines are on a trellis like this, they run across each other and form sort of a net that melons or squash utilize and sometimes the fruit actually rests on the cattle panel itself.

Every spring my local hardware store puts the cattle panels on sale and I always buy several and put them in the shed. I've got a little stockpile and am always looking for something to do with them!