I would definitely use an open trellis material (like the synthetic net material) if you are going to put a trellis on the right-hand bed. The tomatoes in the right hand bed are going to provide quite a lot of shade to the things on the south side of the other bed (might be a good place to plant lettuce/spinach, or other crops that need protection from southern sun). Stakes are much harder to work with than the net material, and I don't think you will have much less shade, especially if you keep the tomatoes pruned. (I've put a great link to an article about tomato pruning below.)

Here is a link that might be useful: Great tomato pruning article link.

The sun travels from the east to the west however the suns rays hit us from a southerly direction. You have to expect that the full length as well as much as a foot higher than the length of the trellis will be covered in leaves and will completely shade the area behind it.

However to determine if that will shade out the box behind it you'll probably have to mock it up to see. I think you'll be fine with anything smaller than a 8' trellis especially when you consider that as the summer approaches the angle of the suns rays are increasing as well.

During the winter the sun hits us from about a 20-degree angle casting long shadows however in the summer the angle of the sun is about 70-degrees and the shadows thrown are much smaller.

:shrug:

Yet another reason to make the pathways at least 4ft. esp. on the north side of a trellis or other tall plants.

What I have done for my tomatoes & other vining crops (My beds 4ft wide) is to put 2 uprights on either side then connect the uprights to a crossbeam. I drop one string down to each plant, winding the plant around the string as it grows. This is described in Mel's 1st book quite well and works surprisingly well, holding up even to high winds better than my stakes & cages ever did.

Good Luck,
Gumby_CT

My main concern is that if you put up a trellis that is 8 feet wide,how are you going to be able to reach the middle -without walking in the bed? I could see reaching around strings from the backside,but if it's some type of wire mesh,it would be impossible.

Thanks for all the feedback.

I was planning on using th 7" square nylon mesh, but I hadn't thought about the fact that it would be hard to reach from the front. I may have to think about that, at least I have really long arms...

I look forward to reading the pruning link as I have never know how to do that and it seemd to be imperative with this type of garden.

I am also going to look for Mel's first book and investigate the string idea, which may help with harvesting.

I'll plant lettuce and spinach in the right row of the left garden.

This is my first time with raised beds, intensive gardening and I don't exactly have a green thumb, so thanks again for the help.

AFTER I did the goal post type here - I thought "what good is it, if you can't reach it?" So I never used the upper 3ft pieces. The bottom uprights are 6ft.

I have trellised entire beds of tomatoes by putting uprights at the 1 & 3 ft marks on each side. Each cross beam would handle 2 rows.

Thanks Gumby_ct, so did you plant 12 tomatoe plants in one 4x4? Is this where you have strings hanging down from the beams or are you using a mesh on them?

Very interesting. I kept thinking I could only grow vertical crops in one row of the box, not thinking that I could put two rows or more of tomatoes.

12 would be too organized. What I had was helter-skelter plants which self-germinated from last years seeds. It was very crowded then I tried to squeeze in a few Basil plants to boot. 12 is easily do-able.

I have never used a mesh. To me that too would be restricting & also block some sun & wind.

I'm surprised 12 in a bed worked. Wouldn't the tomato plants on the south side shade the rest of the ones behind them? My guess is that the south ones would get very big and the others would be smaller and not produce as much. What was your experience?

The view in the bottom pic above is from the south facing north. 3 beds in a row, in the middle of the pic are ALL tomatoes.

The lower left hand corner has cukes & tomatoes.

I didn't say it was pretty.