Pea training and harvest access

[Vanisle_BC]

We love garden peas and I try to grow plenty (what's more relaxing than shelling peas in the sunshine?) I only grow varieties that stay below 3 or 4 feet tall, in raised beds. I train them up plastic mesh on frames across the bed width; but it's impossible to place frames close together because you have to get between them to harvest the pods. I don't have a place where I could plant a long row with access to both sides.

So far my solution is to put frames across the beds at 4 foot intervals (the length of my bed sections.) I plant a row to grow up each side of each frame. This works quite well but has some disadvantages: e.g. It shades neighboring plants and spreads the pea 'section' all around the garden.

I'm wondering if/how others manage to maximize pea harvest in a compact way but still get between the plants for harvesting.

[PraticalGardener]

If you happen to have a few spare tomato cages lying around, you can let the peas climb on those. I've used tomato cages before, although I did have a walking path along both sides and used all the tomato cage legs. You can put the tomato cages 'up front' so that you (or children) can better look and reach around the tomato cages. You can also adjust the rotation of the tomato cage, and can choose to only plant peas with some of the legs, rather than of all of them. If you get stronger winds, you may want to go ahead and reinforce the pea plants on the outside with string as they reach their full height. I've had pea plant tops blow down, to have to pick up and tie back up again. I don't know how closely you usually space your peas, but I personally favored 3-4 peas per tomato cage leg, between weeding and harvesting. I used to manually train each pea to grow on the ring once they were tall enough, but in hindsight it may also help to add some strings beforehand to help the peas along.
I am also curious if there are any other methods to grow a lot of peas, as my family and I also love our peas. Now we use part of a long 'cattle panel', which is how we 'maximize' our pea crop. Our 'cattle panel' has almost entirely 6" by 8" holes, which is easy to get your hand and arm in, provided no plants are in the way.

Here is a picture to help illustrate some ideas, if you want. These are to play around/experiment beyond how I used them growing up, given the change of accessing from one side.

Peas on Tomato cages to hopefully access easily from one side

Peas on Tomato Trellis iii.jpg (35.71 KiB) Viewed 1817 times

Edited: Do you also grow sweet corn or sunflowers? If you already do at over 5inch spacings anyways, I would be tempted to try one or two pea plants on every other one of those as supports. It would not be the most practical for harvesting efficiently, but it might be a way to squeeze in just a few more pea plants. I've tried with 1/2 runner beans on every 3rd corn plant, but haven't yet tried with peas just yet.

[Vanisle_BC]

Thanks, PG.

The tomato cage idea's interesting but I think (this year at least) I'm going to stick with my cross-bed mesh frames. I generally plant peas about 1.5" apart in the row. I like the sound of the 8x6 holes on your panel but at the spacing I use, reaching through the vines is impossible. I don't usually grow corn but am thinking of doing so this year. Letting beans go up the stalks is traditional; why not peas? Maybe the timing wouldn't work very well - pea season over before the corn's ready to support them? I'll have to think about that. As with tomato cages, the peas could be in groups of 3 or 4, per corn stalk.

I suppose the real pea solution would be to create one long well-supported row (or two spaced walking-distance apart) in the unused part of the yard. I probably have room for that but maybe not the energy

[applestar]

If you want to interplant peas and corn, what I’ve tried in my 12 ft x 8 ft “Sunflower House” bed is to plant peas on both sides of 4 feet long x 3 feet tall bamboo stakes supported cotton string trellises, spaced approximately 3.5 feet apart. Corn planting season occurred just as the peas were starting to mature, and I planted the corn in the middle of the widely spaced “paths”. I am small with small feet, and could manage to walk, straddling the corn, without stepping on them and harvest the peas.

That time, the timing worked out just right, and I was able to finish harvesting the peas and cut them at soil level to for the vines and the strings to act as mulch between the corn rows just about when the corn was starting to get in the way of managing to work around them.

Definitely pre-germinate the peas before sowing/planting in a small space for maximum efficiency with every seed growing.

Only issue was that I had to lift shovelfuls of soil to hill the corn with, but at least initially, the peas helped to protect the corn from falling over, etc.

[Vanisle_BC]

Hi, Applestar. If I read you right, you were strictly interplanting; not using the corn to support the peas? But it's a good strategy - getting double use of the space.

I do pre-germinate peas because around here if spring is cool & wet (it usually is) they can rot in the ground. I Suspect that once they've started to grow that won't happen. Experience tends to confirm this but I've never seen it stated. I never plant them according to the usual advice 'as soon as the ground can be worked.' I did that once and went to extreme lengths to baby them along - but a second sowing a month later matured at the very same time as the 'early' one.

[PraticalGardener]

Ah my bad, I'm so used to planting Wando peas in late spring that I forgot peas can be planted sooner! I guess that's why I thought the timing looked like it would work well to me, with a late spring planting of Wando peas and sweet corn.

I can completely relate with gardening within what one can reasonably manage, since I too prefer for my vegetables to both survive and to produce.

[Vanisle_BC]

Planted ~450 peas today. Can't believe I did it - it pelted & pounded heavy rain almost nonstop for the last 24 hours. But I had to do it because my timing was off. Should have paid attention to the forecast when I started pre-soaking 6 days ago. By today some of them had roootlets too long & fragile to ignore. So I ended up planting into mud. Gary might be familiar with that but I bet his mud is warmer than mine. High was 7C air temp; I hope they (and I) don't rot in the wet.

I planted my usual double rows across the raised beds, one row each side of each climbing frame, 1.5" seed spacing. But this time I paired taller with shorter varieties, the shorter ones 'in front' - I.e. not shaded by the taller. I did this not so much for sunlight sharing as for ease of picking. My taller ones are Green Arrow, the shorter Novella & Maestro. I'll also plant some Little Marvel which I haven't had before. I don't grow tall vining peas.

I'm experimenting with different pea fertilizer combos of bonemeal, compost & wood ash. Hope my observation & recording makes the effort worthwhile . If I discover anything significant I'll try to remember to post it.

[applestar]

Well done! ...now give your back a rest today