Early this spring my mother gave us a grape vine to plant out in our orchard. We planted the grape and basically walked away from it for a couple weeks and when we went back - wow! The grape vine is absolutely flourishing and now I need an arbor for it to grow on.
Chasing down material for these projects sometimes can be the hard and time consuming part. For this arbor I had to haul some scissor trusses from my parents house and get some telephone poles from Allyssia's parents house. Getting the poles home is a story for another post but after gathering the materials and borrowing a post hole auger from my neighbor I was ready to go to work.
I seem to be jumping to the finished product really quickly but there is good reason. Between work and baby Roland I did a lot of the work on the arbor in less than ideal lighting in the evenings. The trusses I used are 16 foot long and the poles are set 12 feet apart. In between them are landscaping timbers that Allyssia bought a few years back.
The arbor is 8 feet wide and the width was actually determined by the landscaping timbers. I also made it 8 feet tall so that it would be easy to mow under even if the grapes are hanging down. Once the grape arbor was done and I realized how easy it was I started right in on a slightly smaller arbor for the kiwi plants I am going to put in next year. The kiwi arbor is only 8 foot by 10 foot and 7 feet high. The two reasons that it is smaller is that I only had 12 foot trusses left and we thought it would look better a little smaller for the kiwi's.
In this picture you can see both the arbors as well as my borrowed 12 inch post hole auger. the tractor mounted auger is a lifesaver and I would not want to do post holes any other way. If you enjoyed this post leave a comment and as always check back often!
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