DIY – Pea Trellis

The finished project…

Conventional wisdom (and instructions on seed packets) say plant peas (and sweet peas)  as early as possible – don’t worry about last frost dates or any such nonsense.  Peas don’t mind.  OK, I procrastinated this year, hemming and hawing, worried about rabbits, effort vs reward, location….I had any number of reasons (excuses) why I didn’t get any peas in the ground.

Finally got my act in gear when I was gathering all the maple saplings I had cut late last fall and left scattered in the woods through winter.  Maple is such great wood, I didn’t want to just toss the 10 – 15 foot stems into the fire pit or even chop them up into kindling.  I wanted to use them for something first, then chop them into kindling.

Riffing off last year’s Morning Glory tuteur project, I decided to build a small trellis to stand against the house and grow sweet peas, regular peas and a late cucumber vine or two.  My better half did much of the work, chopping the saplings to size and tying up most of the criss crossing branches.

being built…I wanted to keep the small branches at the top – it looks interesting and will provide support for any extra tall pea plants

I added a few extra branches and then ‘planted’ the whole thing against a west wall, next to the rain barrel (for easy watering).

At first we just used this jute twine but realized we couldn’t get it tight and sturdy enough; added the plastic coated wire for extra support.

For mulch I used chopped up stems and stalks of last year’s perennials (instead of hauling them to the compost pile) – if you look closely here you can see bits of Sedum spectabile.

Instead of cutting down these Sedum stalks and hauling to the compost pile, I chopped them up on site…

If you look closely you can see chopped up Sedum spectabile.

I think I’ll add some short buckthorn stems next – in an attempt to deter rabbits from nibbling on the shoots as they appear.  I’ll let you know if that works!