Beans are easy, peas are stupid!

It seems beans will cling to most anything. Peas not so.

I've been trying different trellises for peas for a long time, and I haven't found one yet that I like ie that I don't have to help the peas along to stay on or within the trellis.

Any suggestions?

its funny you should say that because im haveing the exact oppisite i have to kind of convince my beans that they are going to go this way but my peas have already thrown out some tendrills and latched onto the trellis

Have you tried woven twigs?

http://www.thisoldhouse.com/toh/how-to/step/0,,20296527_20655121,00.html

http://www.mastergardenproducts.com/willowflexfencetrellis.htm


If you do a Google search for twig trellis you can find even more examples. I don't have a willow tree handy, but I do have two large forsythias...hmmmm.

Patti

Gosh, my peas will attach to anything within reach -- right now they are nicely fixed on the trellis. Today I noticed one had reached through the trellis and attached to the hoe handle I left leaning too close. My bad.

My beans are not tall enough yet to attach to anything -- it will be interesting to see how the climb.

I used a Teepee type of trellis. 4 bamboo stick tied at the top. The sugar snap peas seem to latch on just fine. I'm sad to say my peas are starting to dry at the bottom. I might have planted to late it has been in the 80's so might be too hot. I did notice that it has started to flower so hopefully I can get some peas before it totally dies out. Oh yeah my green beans are yellowing out too, sad sad times!

How high do most of you plan for your peas and green beans to grow? My green bean shoots were ruined by rabbits last year and this is the first year I've planted peas, so I'm unsure what to expect.

My green beans were taller than me last year. I'm not exactly super tall though (at 5'2") and the green beans were at least 6' tall because my husband is 6'6" and grabbed all of them at the top.

Magnoliaman wrote:How high do most of you plan for your peas and green beans to grow?

I'm almost 6 feet, and couldn't reach the top beans on an 8 foot trellis.

This past winter, I extended my pea trellises to 6.5 feet.

chocolatepop wrote:My green beans were taller than me last year. I'm not exactly super tall though (at 5'2") and the green beans were at least 6' tall because my husband is 6'6" and grabbed all of them at the top.

I'm trying to visualize this; is his bow taller than you?!

This blog post talks about using a conduit and netting trellis for both beans and peas. If you read the comments, the author mentions that he used it for peas last year with success.

I am wondering if his method of attaching the conduit to steel fence stakes would work as well as using rebar the way Mel outlined in his book. I have built my trellises, but have yet to attach them because I am a bit leary of having rebar sticking up (I've got three active children) when the conduit and netting aren't attached. I am growing melons on them, so I don't think those simple conduit brackets would work.

I use T posts and zip ties to support most of my trellises.

Thanks, Boffer. I presume your frames are conduit?

LOL everything but conduit, but they're nearly all steel of one sort or another.

Magnoliaman wrote:This blog post talks about using a conduit and netting trellis for both beans and peas. If you read the comments, the author mentions that he used it for peas last year with success.

I am wondering if his method of attaching the conduit to steel fence stakes would work as well as using rebar the way Mel outlined in his book. I have built my trellises, but have yet to attach them because I am a bit leary of having rebar sticking up (I've got three active children) when the conduit and netting aren't attached. I am growing melons on them, so I don't think those simple conduit brackets would work.

@Magnoliaman -- I'm the author of the blog post you linked and I wanted to drop in and give you some more details. I've never used rebar like in the book so I can't comment on how sturdy that is. I CAN tell you that using a U-post like pictured in my post is extremely sturdy. The trellis withstood 70MPH+ winds two years ago with ease. I left it in place for over two years and it never bent, moved, or anything.

Just this week I took it down to rotate it to a different area of the garden and that gave me the opportunity to assess the condition. Basically it was in the same shape as the day I put it up. The netting is in perfect condition and the conduit is a bit weathered but looks almost like new. Even the cable ties were in great shape. The U-post I used has a coating of some sort so rust is minimal.

All in all I couldn't be happier with the trellis! From the looks of it I will still be using it 5-10 years from now.

Peas don't seem to climb on their own very well, so I had to manually train them up the netting as they grew. It was very easy and didn't really take much time at all. After they were about 2 feet tall I just let them do what they wanted. Had a bumper crop so they must have been happy! (The peas I grew only got about 4 feet tall, so a much shorter trellis would have been fine.)

As for growing melons -- I don't think it would be a problem at all as long as you support the weight of the melons in some way. I've read that people use old nylons or other stretchy fabrics to construct a cradle for that very purpose.

Hope this additional info helps you out. Thanks for stopping by my website!

Brian
Meadowwood Garden

t-posts are my best friends also.

Thanks Meadowood,

I'm going to go with that method and I would not have thought of it had I not stumbled into your site.

And I thank everyone else for their comments, too.

Magnoliaman wrote:This blog post talks about using a conduit and netting trellis for both beans and peas. If you read the comments, the author mentions that he used it for peas last year with success.

I am wondering if his method of attaching the conduit to steel fence stakes would work as well as using rebar the way Mel outlined in his book. I have built my trellises, but have yet to attach them because I am a bit leary of having rebar sticking up (I've got three active children) when the conduit and netting aren't attached. I am growing melons on them, so I don't think those simple conduit brackets would work.

There are plastic caps that you can put on the rebar. I've seen them on ebay and at Lowes and Home Depot. Here's a few links:

http://www.lowes.com/pd_197972-157-11686_0_?productId=3019571&Ntt=rebar&Ntk=i_products&pl=1&currentURL=/pl__0__s?Ntk=i_products$rpp=15$No=15$Ntt=rebar$identifier=


http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc1vZ60ckx/R-100323493/h_d2/ProductDisplay?langId=-1&storeId=10051&catalogId=10053

The rebar caps are brilliant! I was going to paint mine with obnoxious neon nail polish, but I like this idea much better!

n.

I like the rebar caps, too. Before deciding against rebar, I had planned on capping mine with tennis balls.

This is my first year for SFG. I've always grown peas without a trellis in my row-style garden. I grow the shorter varieties (Lincoln is my absolute favorite), and I plant a double row about six inches apart. I found that the two rows supported each other and didn't need anything else. Occasionally a high wind will blow some of them over, but I can usually just pick them back up. Even when I can't, they still produce peas.

So, I'm wondering if I can do the same thing in a SFG box? Would it work to plant evenly spaced peas all across one end through four grids, and then come back and plant another "row" six inches away in the same grids and allow the plants to lean into each other and provide support for themselves?

I like to snip a few pea tendrils for stir-frying, and it is easier to do that if the tendrils aren't wrapped around something.

ander, that is what I did last year and it worked. We also use pea tendrils in the restaurant. Yummy, and they are pretty expensive if you buy them...

What kind of peas are you talking about, btw? I didn't even know you could get them to climb anything. I thought they were a bush.

My peas are sugar snap, so perhaps that makes a difference? Just know that their tendrils will curl around anything they touch. For trellising, I am using a combination of t-posts and cattle panels, conduit and cattle panels, conduit and wire, conduit and hand-made netting. Some have mentioned plants burning on cattle panel or wire, so will be interested to see the difference with netting. All are between 6 and 7'.

martha wrote:ander, that is what I did last year and it worked. We also use pea tendrils in the restaurant. Yummy, and they are pretty expensive if you buy them...

can you explain pea tendrils and how big you cut and what you do with them?

i'm sure i'm not the only one intrigued about this.

i am new to many things - and growing peas is a new one for me. i always thought i didn't like peas but i figured i'd give it a shot growing them.

Pea tendrils are the little sprigs that grow out the end of the stems. They are the parts that curl around things to support the pea vine.

I snip a tendril stem to include the nearest two or three leaves and very briefly stir-fry them alone as a dish, or add a few to mixed veggie stir-fries. They have a wonderful flavor. My daughter likes them raw in salads, too, but I prefer mine with a quick cooking.