I was a Cub Scout, and there are some very vivid memories from that time in my life. One in particular stands out. I had just bought a pinewood derby car. For those of you who don’t know, this is a small rectangular wood block that Scouts carve into a car shape and race down a ramp. I had just gotten my first one, and my dad brought me into the garage. He let me outline the shape of the car I want, and then he cut along the line I had drawn. Then he gave me some sandpaper. I spent hours shaping it, painting it, and getting ready to race it. It was psyched. My dad would ask me, “are you sure you want to do that?” in a tone I’ve come over the years to associate with parental panic.
Looking back, I understand why. I essentially just had him cut the wood block in half on a diagonal. Instead of a rectangle, I had a large triangle. Then I unevenly sanded the long edge into a lumpy plane. I finished it by painting it virtually every color. It was a blotchy sticky mess that had no chance of winning any races.
Our shed this past fall.
When I told her I would be building a trellis to grow pollinators to feed our bees, she asked me “Are you sure you want to do that?” She was almost as thrilled as she was when I told her we would be getting bees! The plan is to use the trellis as a privacy screen for our bee box, and to give them a source of food close to home.
Our Bees and our wonderful Beekeeper.
I started by scouting out projects on Pinterest. I use Pinterest for inspiration, but I often require more detailed instructions. My skills have improved since I was a young lad, but I am still a beginner. My next step was to login to home improvement reference center. There was a really cool Trellis Arbor that might be a good fit for our backyard long term, but it was an advanced project. Fortunately there was another option. The good news is that according to Home Improvement Reference Center, the Lath Trellis is a great beginner construction project. Unfortunately, it calls for me using my old nemesis, pine!
The instruction in Home Improvement Reference Center breaks down the building of a trellis into easy to follow steps, provides you with a supply/tool list and it even outlines what you should take into consideration. This simple trellis will work though, and the Home Improvement Reference center also lists other projects that work with this one. I’ll leave the Trellis Arbor for someone more experienced. One can also pop over to this website to get the right contacts of roofing contractors and the contacts of various other people who cater to home improvements. Having the contacts of such people can come handy more than you would like to think.
Here is a copy of the instruction I will be using to build the trellis. The instructions come from 52 Backyard Landscaping Projects, a John Deere publication. You can access the Home Improvement Reference Center through the “Information About” drop down, and then selecting all Research A-Z. Then you click DIY and click on Home Improvement Reference center. You can also click here.
Next, I need to figure out how to grow hops… and how to convince my wife this is a good idea. Because… why not?