Veggie support cage connectors by jordanpwood

Last crawled date: 3 years, 1 month ago

These are connectors for holding together 0.5 inch PVC tubing (see note) in hexagonal towers similar to giant honey combs. They have a 0.5 inch space between the vertex of the connectors and the surface on which the PVC tubing rests. So if you want a hexagon where the distance between vertexes is 12 inches (as I have in my pictures), then you will want to cut 11 inch lengths of piping (11 + 0.5 + 0.5 = 12). My garden bed was not quite deep enough to support two full hexagons front to back, so I made connectors to allow cells with flat backs. Also, I wanted supports in the front corners, so I made connectors for poles which only connects sideways to one vertex. There are "top" versions of each type of connector, for a nice finished look at the top. You can mix and match connectors for whatever configuration you want. This build involves a lot of cutting PVC to the same length; I think there are 82 11 inch pieces in my build. We made this cage last year, and this year when we put it together, we superglued select connections (not all of them!) so that when the plants get big and start pressing outward on the supports, there is enough resistance to keep the pipes from pulling out of the connectors. Last year it worked pretty well without any superglue, but when the tomato plants got taller than the structure, some pipes came unconnected, but the structure as a whole stayed together.
NOTE: The PVC tubing sold in the US which is labeled as having a diameter of 0.5 inch actually has a diameter of 0.8 inches. That is the tubing that this build is made for. If you are not sure of the size, then measure your tubing diameter first.