How to Grow Squash Vertically...EVEN ZUCCHINI! Small Space Gardening.

So if you're like me , you might think that in your limited growing space , you don't have room for members of the Korba family , like uh winter and summer squash , melons , pumpkins .

They just take up too much space in this video .

I'm gonna show you how to take these plants a vertical to open up more growing space in your garden .

And it's easier than you think four ways to do it coming up .

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Now , let's get growing vertically .

Now , you guys might think that I have more growing space than I actually do because of all the produce I get out of it .

Technically in my backyard raised beds , which is most of my vegetable growing space .

I only have 100 and 70 square feet .

The way I get more production out of this small space is just about every single bed .

Actually , every bed has some sort of vertical element to it .

And that way I have the opportunity to take that 100 and 70 square feet of growing space and multiply that into 1300 cubic feet of growing space .

Now , you guys all know that I grow my tomatoes vertically , right ?

And beans are kind of a no brainer .

But how about things like cucumbers ?

Ok .

How about some winter squashes ?

A little out of the ordinary but nothing too crazy .

How about watermelons and pumpkins ?

Now we're getting weird .

Well , what about summer squash and zucchini ?

That's just crazy talk right now .

The first method is the most prominent in my garden and that is the tepe .

Now , I did a video in the spring about how to make these tepees for free or really cheap .

So go ahead and check that out .

I'll put a link down in the description of the video to that one .

The second way is with a cattle panel or something similar .

These are a metal grid used for fencing .

They're incredibly durable and affordable .

The third way is with the string method like I use for my tomatoes .

The last method involves using a simple wooden steak .

So tepe are great for beans , but they're also great for just about any member of the winter squash and gourd family plants that love to go nuts that like to ramble all over everything .

They also generally have small to medium sized fruits that don't need a lot of extra support from the gardener on this one .

I'm growing my Lofa .

It did really well on the tepe last year and I will never grow it any other way over here .

On the other side of the path .

I have my birdhouse gourds on this T P and it's actually taken over this T P and it's working its way into another one that I had for cucumbers and I had no idea how crazy these grew and it smothered out the cucumber and took its T P .

But last year I had cucumbers on tepes as well and they did really great when they didn't have a thug like this next to them .

You can see that this one's loaded with gourds .

One of them is really big already .

Now , I've tried growing medium size pumpkins and melons on the tepes .

The problem with that is sometimes they get a little big and they need some support and you can use like panty hose made into a sling um or mesh bags .

But you have to tie those on somewhere .

And with the bamboo , you know , they're almost vertical and they're slick and so they kind of just slid right down the , the bamboo cane .

So if you're wanting to grow pumpkins and melons , a better solution for that are cattle panels .

Now , cattle panels are basically a panel fence made of very strong uh metal that lasts for years and years and years Now , I've heard from a lot of you when I did videos on cattle panels before , uh especially in Europe that you can't find those there .

In that case , you can use a wooden lath trellis .

Um It won't last forever , but it will serve the purpose .

Now , in either of those situations , you want to take either rebar or a tea post or two and drive those into the ground and then lash the trellis or the cattle panel to it with zip ties creates a really strong support .

Now , over at Tammy's Garden this year , she is using my cattle panel to grow watermelon , miniature uh sugar baby water and cantaloupe .

The large openings in the cattle panel allow the plant to have lots of room to grow and to climb naturally .

Um You might need a little training in the beginning but they'll , they'll figure it out , but it's got a lot of cross pieces for you to be able to secure any type of sling or support that maybe larger fruits might need .

Now , they're also great for winter squashes like spaghetti squash , butternut squash .

I've grown them on there successfully many times .

If you have a vertical string trellis like I have for my tomatoes , those are perfect for growing cucumbers you can see over here , I've got my Armenian cucumbers , they're all already to the top of the trellis .

But cucumbers were really , really great this way and it's a great way to fit a lot of cucumbers into a very small space .

A lot of times when cucumbers grow along the ground , they get diseased .

The fruit turn into some weird shapes , maybe discolored and they get nibbled on by pests .

If you grow them up vertically like this , it gives them good air flow .

So the disease process doesn't have a chance to get started in the first place .

Plus you get rid of the misshapen fruit and the pest problems and it's just an all over , better way to grow them .

Now , you do it the same way as the tomatoes landscape staples in the ground , run the string up to the top and then wind the cucumber around the string as it grows , its 10 rolls will also help it climb and hold on .

That's something tomatoes don't have .

And you can also use this method to grow miniature pumpkins or smaller winter squashes .

Now , how about those summer squash , zucchini and yellow ?

My two favorites .

So I thought I invented this method .

I was really proud of myself and then I saw a couple of other people doing it .

Always the case , right ?

Come up with a million dollar brand new idea and realize very quickly that there are very few new ideas .

I was always annoyed because summer squashes , they take up so much space , you start out in one spot and then throughout the season , they snake their way through the bed and the trunk is like two ft , 3 ft long and they end up in another space altogether .

And so that's a lot of wasted space in there that you could have had other crops growing in .

So , in the same vein as everything else , I decided to go vertical at planting time , you drive a stake , one or two ft into the ground .

You want it to be pretty sturdy because these do get top heavy when they reach the top of the stake .

And so you don't want them toppling over , plant the plant next to the stake .

And as it grows , just tie the main trunk onto that steak for the lifetime of the plant , it'll get taller and taller and taller .

Now as it grows , the bottom leaves will be , will turn yellow , look old , maybe get mildew disease .

Uh just chop those off .

And in the end , you're gonna have a trunk like a tree with a zucchini plant on top and it's going to produce all the way up that trunk the whole season .

So first of all , this saves a ton of space .

Second , you get the fruit up off the ground out of the way of pests that would come along and nibble it .

Third as it grows any way you grow it , you need to take off the old leaves as they get old and , and diseased .

And this makes it really easy to do that .

Fourth , as you can see in this bed , if these were all on the ground .

It would be just kind of a carpet of leaves .

Um , this gets them up off the ground , the air flows right through the plants and it keeps them very close to disease free .

And then the last benefit of this is it gets the flowers and the fruit up off the ground .

And this way , they're up in the air where the , um , the pollinators are basically , you're bringing them into their eye level because a lot of times you'll see a canopy of leaves in your squash patch and you can't really see the blooms because they're hidden underneath all the leaves .

So as you can see these are prominent and as soon as these open , the bees will be right in there .

Now , chances are you've already started your summer squash and you didn't put a stake in the ground and you hadn't planned on doing this .

But it's a really easy transition , get these little wooden stakes at the garden center or Home Depot and like I said , drive them in two ft but not a foot or two , but not next to the plant at least six inches away from the plant .

And so once that plant , then or if it's already reaching that post , very gently , move it into location and tie it on as low as possible without bending or breaking that main stem and then continue on like you would .

Now , I used to use twine and then elastic , uh , ties to tie these onto the steak .

The only problem with that it works .

But because the ties or the twine is very flimsy .

You find it hard , especially the beginning trying to pull the plant up to the steak and then tie it on because the strings are flopping all over the place .

Now , what I use is this and all this is , is sprinkler conduit , you can get this at Home Depot or even Amazon sells it .

It's the wire you would use for sprinkler systems .

And the reason I like it is because it's very bendable and it's flexible but it stays in place .

So you only need one hand to be able to wrap this around the trunk and the steak and then tie it together .

It's not going to be flopping .

You're not going to be trying , use the twine .

You'll see what I mean .

You'll go for this immediately .

You could also use zip ties .

I think that would work .

Just don't tighten them up really tight because you need to allow space for that trunk or stem to expand as it grows taller .

But literally , I've been using this for 15 years .

I got a spool of it 15 years ago and I use it over and over and over every year on everything , not just plants .

I found uses for it for everything .

So it's one of those things that you can buy , um , that you can literally will last you a lifetime .

So that's it four different ways to grow every kind of squash vertically .

Let me know in the comments if you're already using one of these methods and how it's working for you , or if you thought of one that's completely different , that maybe no one else has ever used before and let us know that in the comments as well .

And I will see you guys on Tuesday .