How to Plant Climbing Vines

If you think of Tarzan and Jane whenever you hear about vines, it's time to use your imagination. Climbing vines are not just vehicles for traveling through the jungle. In gardens large and small, gardeners use climbers to cover unsightly areas, add vertical interest and provide privacy screens. Vines can transform ordinary vertical areas into corners full of color, texture, romance and even bohemian abandon. Facilitate planting a vine by thinking through the kind of climbing mechanism that will work best just there, where a vine belongs.

Unlike shrubs, trees and some other flowering plants, vines that climb rely on underlying structures to win the fight against gravity. Gardeners divide the world of climbing vines into two types: those that twine and those that climb. Twiners, such as trumpet honeysuckle (Lonicera sempervirens), twine around a support structure either clockwise or counterclockwise, depending on their genetics. As a gardener, you just sit back and watch it happen.

Think of true climbing vines as plants skilled in mountaineering. These vines attach themselves to support structures by tendrils, hooks or aerial rootlets. Perennial sweet peas (Lathyrus latifolius) climb with tendrils. Your job as a gardener is to get those myriad tendrils on the right track before they tangle up with each other, forming a mass of vegetation. Hook climbers and vines with aerial rootlets only need assistance at the very beginning to keep them off other ornamental plants as well as the more tender areas in your home's facade.

Planting a climbing vine in your yard is no harder than installing any other plant. Give due weight to considerations such as U.S. Department of Agriculture plant hardiness zones, spacing, soil type and exposure, as well as assisting the vine in its upward climb.

Garden gloves

Shovel

Tape measure or ruler

Organic compost

Mulch

Walk through your yard and determine where you want to plant a climbing vine. Note whether the area is in sun or shade and the type and acidity of the soil.

Select a vine species that thrives in your USDA zone and thrives on the type of exposure your area offers. For example, trumpet honeysuckle grows as a perennial in USDA zones 4 through 9 in full sun while perennial sweet peas are hardy in USDA zones 5 through 9 in sun or partial shade. Some vines do best in shade, some in partial sun, others in direct sun. Some thrive in acid soil, others in alkaline. Most do best in well-drained, loamy soil.

Put on garden gloves on a spring day after your area's last average annual frost date. Use a shovel to break up the soil in the area you will plant your vine. Work the soil to a depth of at least 18 inches, removing rocks and weeds from the vicinity. Spread several inches of organic compost over the soil surface, and work it into the soil well with the shovel.

Dig a hole in the freshly worked soil about 6 to 12 inches from the support structure. Make the hole three times the size of the container in which your vine plant grows. Remove the plant from its container, and loosen its roots.

Replace enough worked soil in the hole you dug so that the vine's crown -- where the roots and stems join -- is a few inches below the soil surface. Tip the plant slightly in the direction you wish it to grow. Fill the space around the plant with soil, and pat the soil in place gently. Add a 3-inch layer of mulch around the vine, keeping the mulch several inches from the stem and foliage. Irrigate the soil well immediately after planting. Water sufficiently enough during the first few weeks afterward to keep the soil moist but not soggy.

Ask at your garden store about the maintenance required for your vine selection. Vines that bloom on new wood in summer often do best with a severe pruning in the winter months. Old-wood bloomers require only a light trim after flowering or a severe haircut if they grow out of control. If you need to prune, sterilize the pruners each time you use them. Clean soil and other debris from them first, and then soak them for five minutes in a solution of 1 part rubbing alcohol to 1 part water. Either rinse them with clean water or air-dry them.

Some climbing vines are so hardy and tough that they escape cultivation and bloom in otherwise wild areas, shadowing out native plants. These types -- such as trumpet honeysuckle -- are termed invasive. If you decide to grow an invasive vine species, take care to keep it only in your garden.