With the help of some support spread the creeper or vine vegetables on the prepared structure above the ground, which is called pandal, mandap, trellis or machan. In this, the plants are spread on wooden, iron or cement poles on a structure made of wire or plastic mesh. It can be prepared in many ways like khadi pandal, chhatnuta pandal, tikoni pandal etc.
It is very important to give support to vine vegetables. Plants are offered on the pandal by tying a wire at the upper end of the pillars. For support, vertical pillars are erected upright and prepare pits of 2-2.5 feet deep. Keep the distance of the pit from the pit about 6 feet, due to more distance, the pandal starts swinging due to the weight of the crop. Keep the poles upright and bury them well in the soil. If using cement poles, there is no problem, but when using wooden poles, they get spoiled by termites. Therefore, to protect them, put a plastic pipe or polythene on the buried part of the soil. After this, the upper ends of all the pillars are tied with iron wire connecting one pillar to another and then the upper part is covered with a plastic rope or net, so that the vine does not swing down. The height of the pandal can be kept 1.5-2.0 meters. But the height varies according to the crop, generally 4.50 feet for bitter gourd and cucumber, but 5.50 feet for bottle gourd etc.
Advantages of a pandal
Spreading the plants over the prepared structure provides enough space to spread, resulting in increased yields due to photosynthesis.
The fruits remain long, soft and uniform in shape due to not coming in contact with the soil, the market value of the fruit is higher.
In the pandal method, plants are less affected by pests and diseases due to being away from the land and it is also easy to control.
Due to the offering of creeper vegetables on the pandal, one can get double benefit by growing partial shade crops like coriander, spinach, turmeric, arbi, radish etc.
With this method, with the ease of contemporary work, harvesting of fruits can also be done easily.
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