How to Build a Strong Cattle Panel Arch Trellis!

[Applause] there are a lot of ways to build arched trellises out of cattle panel we needed one that could handle florida storms the weight of the vegetation that we're planning on growing but that was also freestanding and fairly attractive we'll show you how we built this one what's involved in it and if you stick around right to the end we'll show you how to use the clips that come with the t-posts to make the most secure connection that we know [Music] so we want to put an arched trellis right here you'll see that we've already marked it out with boards shows roughly where we want it to go but we're not entirely sure exactly how wide to put it so we don't want to put in any stakes to guide it or anything like that we kind of want to put the panel in place and then either move it narrower or wider and see how it looks so we're going to show you how we do that if you've ever tried to wrangle one of these cattle panels they're pretty heavy and if you're going to bend them they can always snap back so having a way to do that by yourself is great but if you happen to have a helper that makes it a lot easier the cattle panels are metal so even though they're not sharp you still probably want to use gloves just so that you save your hands so i just want to show you really quick what we're working with here we have standard t-posts the t-posts that we get from tractor supply seem to be a little heavier duty than the ones that we get from the big box stores they may be a little bit more expensive but they seem to have better sizes available and they usually always have them in stock also have some ratchet straps the ratchet straps we're going to use to kind of control the panel as we're changing its size and figuring out how wide we want the arch to be we also have the clips that are used we'll talk more about those at the end of the video we're going to use those to attach parts of the cattle panel to the t-posts you would think that clips are something that are really easy to use but they don't give you any instructions and it's not intuitive if you don't know how they work so we'll show you that at the end and then a tape measure if you want to measure how far apart they are and make sure that your ends are even and then gloves always a good idea when dealing with anything metal let's go get our cattle panel so daisy's holding up the cattle panel for us the first thing that you have to decide is how you want the bars oriented if you look on one side the bars run in one direction and they're on the outside the other side the ones based on how they're welded run the other direction and you have to decide whether you want the long bars running on the outside uninterrupted or the short bars running on the outside uninterrupted we want the short bars on the inside of the arch when we are done so that's the way we're going to set it up the other thing you have to be aware of is that on a lot of cattle panels the end squares are a different size on one side than they are on the other so if you look at these squares here on the top they're about the length of my finger if we go down you can see that that one is significantly longer than my finger and that goes all the way down and the ones at the bottom are the long squares and the ones on the top are the short rectangles so you have to be aware of whether you want that to be back or front and that's how you're going to orient your panel based on whether or not you want the short bars inside or outside and where you want those smaller squares to end up there are other sizes of panels available the main difference between them is the thickness or gauge of the metal bars and the spacing of the holes so your best bet is to check tractor supply or whatever your local farm and feed supply store happens to carry and just pick based on what you can afford and what you want keep in mind the stronger or heavier the gauge of metal the more weight the panel will be able to take so here's our first panel this is actually going to be two panels for this arch one in the front one in the back to make just a longer archway and what we've done is used one ratchet strap in the middle of the arch to kind of hold it in place while we get the rest of the structure set up and the ratchet straps are really the best method we've found for when you're not 100 sure what size your arch needs to be and you want to be able to test a few different variations without having to pound a stake in the ground to hold the arch in place deciding you want it narrower or wider and having to pull the stake out and stake it in again we just found that the straps work really well for this they let you make very good adjustments very quickly and they keep just enough structure in the panel to stop it from flopping around or to stop one end from springing away and smacking somebody which is a risk with these metal panels until you get them set up and tied down so now we're going to show you how we attach the bottom straps uh and these are the ones that you're going to be doing the most work with and they're the most important because that's where most of the spring tension ends up so it may be hard to see in the camera but you should be able to see each of those little cross sections where the bars are welded together and where they meet and you don't want to use the ones on the very end or on the very outside because then your your latch may move around whereas if you put it at one of the intersections preferably right on the top one square in and then on the other side you pull it over and do exactly the same thing the only other caveat here is try to make it so that the hooks are facing the bottom that way if for any reason tension is let off of the strap the hooks will stay attached if they're the other way around they may fall off if you lose tension when you're moving the thing around then we do exactly the same thing with the bottom one that way you can just pull the strap over and hook it and now you've got three straps holding the whole panel up and kind of keeping it in place you may look at that and think why don't i just use the two on the bottom if you only use the bottom straps then what happens is the middle can bow outwards and the top can collapse and the bottom will come in so therefore you lose your structure and somebody can get a little hurt if they get smacked in the face with a panel i found that with three straps or even four if it's easier for you that it just makes it keep its shape a whole lot better so now we can go about arranging it putting it where we want and then we can measure how wide it is we think that we want this panel at five foot so daisy has just taken the tape measure and measured from one bar to the other all the way across exactly where the ratchet straps are and that's at five foot and we've just shortened each of the ratchet straps so that they're all the same length so now we can test out what it looks like at five foot wide so here daisy's holding the cattle panel up after we've positioned it we've set it for the five feet that we think but you can see she can hold it easily on one side without any problems it doesn't flop around it's not going to go anywhere because of the ratchet straps but be aware that it is not completely structurally sound if she lets go it can fall over so you just need one person to hold it in place but other than that it will stop it from springing back you don't have to worry about it moving one side and not the other it just needs a little bit of help it just makes it a whole lot easier to manage if you have the ratchet straps on it so daisy and i have both stepped back and took a look at this where it is this is at five foot we're not sure but we might want to run it to five and a half foot so that that top is not quite as high and we want to see what that looks like so that's where we're just going to stretch out each of the straps in place without unhooking them we're just going to stretch them out an extra six inches and see what that looks like and we'll see whether we want to keep it at five foot or go to five and a half foot so this is the arch at five and a half feet and that actually lowers the top to about 78 inches at five feet it was about 80 inches and i think we actually prefer it at five feet so we're going to reset it again at five foot and that should be our final adjustment so here we've sped up the process i'm just using longer t-posts in order to line up everything and use those as a reference for where i want the final t-post to go in and where we want the second panel to go and then i check the first t-post where i would like it and then we're going to dig out our mulch out of the way so that it's easier to get the t-post in the ground then i use the t-post driver to knock the t-post in and get it started you can see that daisy is pulling the panel away from the t-post just because if i hit one of those pieces of metal of the panel with the t-post it will dent it and i don't want to do that we're also checking to make sure that all of the t-posts are set to the same level if you look on the flat side of the t-post that is against the panel there will be knobs that are used to set different panels at different heights you can simply make sure that all of those knobs are essentially at the same height against the bars of the t-post and you'll see that when we're putting the clips on where we've set ours against the bars that are there [Music] and then once we get all of the posts in the right places we'll go ahead and remove all of the straps and we'll be able to see how it's lined up this is the finished result we added a second panel behind the first using the exact same method although we didn't have to measure as much as the first one we used three clips for each post at the top middle and bottom the result is seen when looking at the arch from the front the side portions are quite straight and the top is a nice even arch you can tie down the arch in only one or two spots per pole if you want but i don't think it would keep its shape quite as well when weighted down with vegetation and fruit you can also use only one pole per panel if that's all you can manage but we try to build with hurricanes and weather in mind so we decided that two poles per arch would be better for us also if you're propping the arch against something like a raised bed edge we prefer to attach the panel directly to the bed in order for a panel to maintain its rigidity it needs to be attached to an unmoving support not just propped up against it you don't have to do this the way that we have we're just trying to show you some options and what works for us based on the previous ones we've made after getting the two panels in place and clipped in i used galvanized wire to keep the two panels together we like galvanized electrical fence wire which is light enough to be able to shape fairly easily with pliers but strong enough to still be effective at supporting whatever we use it for i just wrapped the wire around the intersections a couple of times to keep the panels together i tuck the cut ends into the center of the joint to stop people or plants from getting snagged on them we've mentioned the clips a couple of times in this video i'll just be showing the process of using the fence clips correctly and installing them on the t-posts as easily and securely as we know how let's take a look at those clips to install the clips which is probably the most secure way of doing this you set up your t's so that the flat side with the notches is against the panel you push the panel back into the t post and you'll see that the clips that come with the t-posts have a short hook on one side and a long loopy hook on the other side this is the hook this is called a horn you take the hook and loop it around the panel wire pull the panel towards the t the first couple will be tight and then you take the horn and place it down on the panel you then take a screwdriver through the back and through the hole in the horn and you twist the horn around the panel and that is now secure and that's how you secure a t-post's clip if you made it through all of that thanks for hanging out with us thanks for taking the time maybe you're not going to build the arch that we have but hopefully you got something out of this if you don't mind a like and a subscribe helps out new channels a lot we'd appreciate it thanks again we'll see you next time five foot wide we're gonna go with four and a half foot wide and see what that does we're not gonna go with four and a half foot are we we're gonna go with five and a half foot no we're gonna go with five foot

Channel: Anole Garden

Views: 708,729

Keywords: Florida Gardening, vegetable garden, zone 9, Cattle Panel, trellis, arch, arbor, Florida vegetable garden, Florida gardening, Gardening 101, Gardening for beginners, Urban gardening, Florida permaculture, North Florida Gardening, Organic, Arched trellis, Arched trellis for garden, How to build an arched trellis, Vertical gardening, Gardening ideas, Trellis ideas, garden arch, growing food, raised bed garden, food forest permaculture, food forest garden, food forest

Id: oeTnZr-GV5c

Length: 14min 58sec (898 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 15 2020