This year my garden goal was to make it as cute as possible. No more ugly wire tomato cages that fall over when the tomato plants get too big. Cute and functional (and inexpensive) was the goal in me newly built raised garden beds. Simple bamboo plant stakes and jute twine were the answer.

I opted for two lengths of bamboo – 4-foot and 6-foot. I cut them down to the lengths I needed using garden shears and tied them into place with jute twine. The stakes stuck easily into the fresh garden top soil but could be cut at an angle, if necessary, for harder soil.

The 4-foot lengths worked great for the first level of trellis for the vining veggies as shown below.

I then made a second tier using the 6-foot lengths as the vines got larger as you can see below.

The longer stakes also came in handy for sides of the DIY tomato cages. I cut the 4-foot stakes down for the cross pieces of the cages and tied with jute.

The shade beneath the vines work as a great resting place for kitties.

For a little variation, I also added in an old metal garden trellis for the cucumbers to climb on.

Project cute garden was a success. I love the way everything is growing up around the natural trellises. I will 100% be using the bamboo stakes again next year.

Full disclosure, I’m not fully satisfied with the bamboo tomato cages. No matter how I tied the cross pieces, they have a tendency to come apart. They can be fixed easy enough but it was pretty tedious tying all of the levels of cross pieces onto five tomato cages and they definitely won’t stay together to use again next year without re-tying every single piece. Next spring I am going to attempt to build wood tomato cages and I’ll stick with the bamboo trellises for the vining plants. No more ugly wire cages for me!

Wait until you see the fun idea I have to add even more cuteness to the fall garden.