Ingenious Pea Supports, Pea Trees

Too lazy to put in pea fences?

Prop up vines with piles of hay, a la Ruth Stout.

Plant dwarf peas, those that grow only fifteen to eighteen inches high, in rows five to six inches apart or in a six-inch wide trench. Plants will intertwine and hold each other up.

Use pea brush, as our forefathers did. Just after planting, stick twigs of deciduous trees or shrubs into the pea trench. Place them close together so they form a natural latticework for pea vines to climb.

For conventional pea fencing, stretch chicken wire on metal fence posts. Make it three to four feet high for regular peas and six or more feet high for the edible-podded variety.

Prepare pea fencing ahead of time and save work in the spring. Here’s how Bob and Eleanor Kolkebeck assemble their fence for edible-podded peas, which need a tall and sturdy support.

Staple six-foot high, two-inch-mesh chicken wire to six-foot lengths of 1″ x 2″ lumber. Put the lumber at each end of the fence and space it at three- to four-foot intervals in between. Roll it up and store it until planting time.

In spring, unroll the fence and lay it on the ground with one edge touching the planting trench. Wherever there is a lumber strip, drive a three- to four-foot high metal fence post into the ground (much easier to drive than wood).

Raise the chicken wire fence against the metal stakes. Wire the metal stakes to the wooden fence posts, using about three twistems for each stake. You need a friend to help juggle everything. At the end of the pea season, untwist the wires, pull up the stakes, roll the chicken wire and lumber neatly, and store until next year.

“One year we had a heavy windstorm, and it blew all the pea vines off the fence. We had a lovely fence standing, but all the vines were in a tangled heap on the ground, impossible to put up again. Now we take a few minutes to prevent this. As the vines grow, we simply hold them with twine every foot or two of growth as insurance,” Eleanor explains. Fasten one end to the first stake, stretch it to the next and wind it around, and so on. Do this on both sides of the fence.

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