Instead of spending hours every season wrestling with sticks and string to set up your runner bean supports, would you not rather spend ten minutes doing it the easy way, and then kick back and relax with the time
you have saved? Here's how:

Make yourself some steel plant supports, or get somebody to make them for you. Its easy and cheap, as the supports are best made of round bar, which is the cheapest section of steel you can buy. They are practical, strong and perfectly suited to supporting climbing plants. They can be easily and tidily stored when not in use, by simply hanging them on pegs inserted in a garden wall. They are quick and easy to set up, requiring only a hammer and the minimum of effort. As an added bonus, they will last a lifetime with the minimum of care.

Start by making a sketch of the support. Draw a rectangle, and add a lattice of horizontal and vertical bars inside your rectangle. Space your vertical bars as far apart as your plants will be. Horizontal bars can be about 100mm (4") apart. All the bars for this rectangle and lattice can be made of 6mm (¼") round bar.

For runner beans, peas and other vigorous creepers, make your rectangle about 2m (6') tall and about 600mm (2') wide. Don't make your supports too wide, or they become difficult to handle. Also, its better to use two narrow supports as opposed to one wide support, because with two supports, you have twice as many legs in the ground to support your foliage. To support bushy plants like peppers, bush beans and bush tomatoes, make your supports about 750mm (2½') tall and 1m (3') wide.

Remember that standard round bar is supplied in 6m (20') lengths, so plan to utilise the whole length of a bar to avoid wastage. Add legs to the bottom of your rectangle. Make these of 12mm (½") round bar, about 300mm (1') long.

When you have a satisfactory sketch, contact your local steel merchants and get them to cut the steel to length for you. Now take your steel and lay it out on your work surface, as in your sketch, and weld it together. Make sure you weld every joint, and wherever the lattice members cross each other. This increases strength and also stops any two pieces of steel rubbing on each other and causing rust.

The last welding task is to attach the legs. Don't weld these on the bottom of your rectangle. Weld the legs on the outsides of the rectangle, with about 50mm (2") of overlap, so that when you hammer the support into the ground, you hammer directly on the top of the leg, and not anywhere else on the support. Even better if you weld a 50mm (2") piece of scrap between the rectangle and the leg, so that you have more space for your hammer.

All that's left to do now is provide some corrosion protection. If you want your supports to last for twenty years, have them galvanised. Otherwise give them a coat of Hammerite or any other solvent based rust preventative paint. They may need touching up every year or two, but they will still give you many years of service, and save you a lot of time.

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