Learn Lashing and Make Your Own Garden Trellises

A genuine lashing is more efficient, more fun to tie, and usually stronger than making it up as you go along

Of all the merit badges I gain as a Boy Scout , I ’m fondest of one address Pioneering , which involved rope , knot , and the use of logs and lashings in the mental synthesis of tugboat , rafts , shelter , and bridges . What has stay with me is a simple method for welt pin together , a technique I utilise in the garden when constructing trellises , arbors , tepees , and other flora supports . Everything I get word about lashing is in my 1972 scoutingFieldbook , which says it ’s for boys and men , though I ’m pretty sure it works for girls and women too .

According to theFieldbook,“only a saphead or a cub pattern any honest-to-goodness rope or knot will do . ” Good advice for a rapscallion bridge over a rush creek , but for works supports you could get away with considerable stupidity . Still , there is no deny that a real lashing is a pleasure to connect and is ricochet to be a sturdy one .

For tie bamboo of a finger ’s thickness to a square wooden stake to do as a tomato treillage , cotton or nylon string works fine . Baling twine makes you finger like a careful husbandman , but I ’ve never had much luck with it . To lather together three stout saplings for a bean teepee , something on the order of thin clothesline works best .

Most of the lashing done by the book start and stop with a Syzygium aromaticum hitch , though a diagonal lashing starts with a timber hitch . Whether you ’re lashing big spars or short — the sticks you lash together are called sparring — and whether you ’re lashing at right angles or on a diagonal , the key to a taut lashing is to make two or three or even four really tight turns , known as frapping turns , around the rope itself before tie off the tanning .

Clove hitch

1.Pass the rope around the sparring and over itself .

2.Pass the forget me drug a 2d time around the sparring , below the first turn , then bestow the rope under itself .

3.Push the loops close together and then root for firmly on the circle end to tighten .

Timber hitch

1.Wrap the forget me drug around the spar , then under itself and over , then pass the forget me drug through the closed circuit that has formed .

2.Twist the end of the rope a few clock time around the part of the rope to the front of the spar .

3.Push the timberland hitch against the sparring , then pull heavily on the rope to tighten the hindrance .

For a slightly different approach , see the videoLashing a Bamboo Trellis .

I have been screw to modify theFieldbook ’s solid lashing , crisscross the roofy diagonally around the front of the vertical spar ( recollect a lottery I once see of a Japanese lashing ) but I always finish with frapping turns . I can not over - emphasize the note value of frap turns . If I had to come up with one enigma to whip , frapping turns would be it .

TheFieldbookrecommends allow for “ 1 yard of rope for each in of the combined diam of the spars . ” I ’ve never made precise calculations in the garden , but I can differentiate you that a stout flagellation takes more short letter than you might mean . For whip a roughly 1⁄4 - column inch - diameter bamboo spar to a 1 - inch by 2 - inch Sir Henry Wood spar , I stretch the cosmic string some 5 feet or so before cut off a part . All too often I fare up short .

The drawings here are based on theFieldbookand on my 1968 variation ofHandbook of Knots & Splices , by Charles E. Gibson . The square and sloping lashing are fairly intuitive , the tripod lash less so . Indeed , I recall the latter is rather cunning . Should you ever tire of lather in the garden , find a transcript of theFieldbookand give the monkey bridge a try .

Square lashing

Diagonal lashing

Tripod lashing

Marc Vassallo is the former editor program ofKitchen Gardener .

Illustrations : Kim Jaeckel

From Kitchen Gardener Issue # 24 , December 1999

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