Climbing wires for a rambling rose - advice please

KitBMiller

I have a rambling rose to plant which I grew from a cutting.  Its going against a fence and it seems the best thing to use is galvanised 2.5mm wire. I can't find info anywhere on the appropriate size of vine eyes.  I'm looking at the options from screwfix but not sure if it matters which guage I need or which length - apart from longish.  

I knows some lovely persons out there will advise me!  Tnx

BenCotto

Take a look at the Gripple system. It’s not cheap but it’s very good.

Lizzie27

I second that as I've used Gripple wires for years.

A rambling rose is likely to be very heavy when fully mature so you would need quite substantial long vine eyes to screw into your wall/fencepost and heavy duty wire.

nick615

Best not to allow bare wires to touch foliage in case of burning in hot weather, so protect with rubber or plastic tubing.  We're now in summer so don't stretch wires too tightly.  As they contract in cold weather, they can snap so allowing a bit of slack now will avoid that.

Nollie

I use 3mm wire and sturdy 10cm long vine eyes with about a third of the length screwed in. This leaves a reasonable gap between the fence and the wires for airflow, important for roses trained against a fence.

Between vine eye and wire are wire tensioners, so you can adjust the tension as necessary. One end hooks onto the vine eye and the other is for the wire - it has a screw mechanism in the middle to adjust the tension. I start off pretty taut as they always seem to slacken in use. I worried about metal wires in my hotter climate, but the roses were fine.

The key thing is to use a soft plastic/rubber-coated tie or sturdy natural twine to tie in the canes so you don’t damage them and don’t tie too tightly/loosen them as the canes thicken up. Tie in using a figure of 8 so the canes aren’t rubbing against the wires - so a closed loop tied tightly around the wire to keep it where you want it and a looser loop around the cane.

KitBMiller

Thank you so much everyone for the advice.  I'd already ordered the wire but the gripple system looks good - I will look at that in future as I dont think i'm staying in my house longer term so its a bigger investment. I feel a bit more reassured by Nollie, its not going to be a rose in full sun so I will tie in carefully and pick up some tensioners as well, thank you all!

Mr. Vine Eye

What Nollie said is good.

You either need very sturdy vine eyes at either end of each run if using tensioners, or its an idea to have them screwed into something so they’re running on the same axis as the wire. They’re taking the strain directly down the body and into the screw rather than side on.

If they’re side on you may find that they start bending when you tighten the tensioners.

Another way to do it is to sink two vine eyes in at either end. The furthest one with the tensioner attached is screwed right in, so only the metal ring is left on the surface (so it can’t bend) then have another vine eye at bit further along that’s sticking out more to provide an air gap.

I’ve done both of these. On my back wall I used the second suggestion for supporting a fruit tree. On the fence, I have screwed the end vineeyes into the house wall, and then the back wall. So the fixings on the actual fence are just supporting the wires they’re not actually under any tension. All the tension is going into the stronger structures of the walls. I used wire anchors for the concrete posts on that fence.

I’ve also got vine eyes screwed directly into concrete posts, because they were softer, which have an air gap already so I used smaller vine eyes and just screwed them all the way in, so tension not an issue with those.

I got a large pick n mix bag from the Wilko DIY section and filled it with both the smaller and larger vine eyes that they have there. Very cheap and they’ve lasted well. I’ve still got lots of them to use up after a few years!

Mr. Vine Eye

That 2.5mm wire (I’m assuming from screwfix) is great! I used that on my shed. It’s the maximum I’d use as it’s actually more like 3mm in thickness, anything thicker than that becomes very hard to work with and cut. Overkill as well.

If you’ve got long runs of wire then the thicker the better, but if you can support it at regular intervals then you can get away with lower gauge.

Nollie

‘ Another way to do it is to sink two vine eyes in at either end. The furthest one with the tensioner attached is screwed right in, so only the metal ring is left on the surface (so it can’t bend) then have another vine eye at bit further along that’s sticking out more to provide an air gap’

That’s a really good idea @Mr. Vine Eye, the end ones do take a lot of strain!

I used 3mm hawser wire as it’s an 8 metre run with some new, but large and vigorous climbing roses on, so I wanted it as sturdy as possible, the other end has enough slack in the tensioner to tighten if necessary but I should probably have left a bit of slack at this end too:


The intermediate vine eyes every 2m are just guides really:

Mr. Vine Eye

@Nollie you've got really good chunky ones there. I struggled to find any that size, regardless of price. So that's why I went cheap and cheerful in the end!

Nollie

German engineering, @Mr. Vine Eye, German engineering 😆 From a diy store called Bauhaus, don’t think you have them in the UK.