Is a wire fence too hot to use as a trellis?

[TyroGardener]

I'm going to put up a 6-foot high fence around my backyard made of welded wire with 2" x 4" openings.

I'm hoping to create a privacy fence that produces tasty food like peas, beans, squash, etc.

Here's my concern: I read that a wire fence will heat up in the sun and become too hot for climbing vine plants to hold onto.

I'd appreciate hearing from anyone with knowledge about this.

Thanks,

[rkunsaw]

I've never heard of wire fence being too hot.They sell wire cages for tomatoes and such.I've been using cattle panels in my garden for years.You do need to have the fence where you can get to both sides of it or the grass and weeds will take over.

[gixxerific]

NO I know many people including myself that use concrete reinforcing wire to make tomato cages out of. I also use those little square tomato cages, stretched out in a straight line you get at the store for trellises with no problem.

[garden5]

No, you don't have to worry about that. I've heard of so many people who have used these wire cages to trellis all sorts of things.

[mmk1982]

I have a 6 foot tall wire fence and have successfully grown cucumber, beans, and peas up it.

[nes]

Scarlet Runner beans say: "Wire fencing is definitely not too hot!"

[img]https://3.bp.blogspot.com/_vA3amsl86mU/S7wBVUA7v1I/AAAAAAAAADE/bjJ9jsDjUnw/s1600/DSC00689.JPG[/img]

Plus, it's going to help the plants get lots of ventilation when you're growing something more dense, like squash & cucumber.

Good luck with your fence! I'm doing the same thing.

[Ozark Lady]

If you had heavy fencing up, and the temps were over 100F and you started one lone plant, it is possible, though unlikely to get too hot for it.

But, most folks using fencing for trellises, myself included, usually start the plant, and install the fencing before the temps are so high, then by the time I can expect to see those 100F days, the wire is pretty well shaded by leaves of the plants.

I have grapevines that live on webwire fencing. They aren't protesting at all! My peas have chicken wire to climb up. And my tomatoes have horse fencing for their cages (it is small enough that I can cut the wire and bend it, unlike the heavier wires).

[thanrose]

As one Floridian to another, yeah, metal fencing can get too hot for some plants. Mostly for plants that it's too hot for us to grow anyway. My peas in past years could fry parts of the vines that touched the wire concrete reinforcing mesh, causing the vine above it to die, but that was always later in the pea season, like March or April for us.

The thinner the wire, the better. You'll see plenty of people here using tomato cages from wire or hardware cloth, or growing stuff on chain link fences, but if you tried to grow something unconventionally, like a fairy garden planted around and through an old metal desk chair, you might find that's going to scald a few plant stems. My ex killed a plant one year by forgetting the metal hoe in the garden row. The heat from that larger piece of metal fried a cucumber vine.

Wire fencing is generally fine though. Especially if you have decent breezes, or shifting shade.