When it comes to planting peas, mangetout and sugarsnaps, you will need to give them some support to climb. Here are three easy options…
Chicken wire & bamboo
Make a mini-chicken wire fence with two bamboo canes woven through either end of the chicken wire – prod the bamboo canes into the ground and plant your peas along the base of the chicken wire so that they can scramble up. If growing sugar snap or garden pea, it’ll need to be about 1m tall, if growing mangetout, 1.5m to 2m is better.
Pea sticks
Find some twiggy sticks measuring approx 50-60cm height, and prod them into the ground alongside your pea plants. This works for sugars snap and garden pea, but not for mangetout (as they climb much taller)
Wigwam & twine
Build a wigwam with bamboo canes – either approx 60cm for sugarsnap/garden pea, or approx 1.5m/2m for mange tout. Wind the twine around the wigwam in a spiral all the way up to the top, leaving approx 10cm gap. The peas will be able to climb both up the bamboo and latch onto the twine for support.
Don’t feel that these are your only options – if you have a trellis up against a wall, you can use that, or if you have a fence that you can plant peas next to, then you could simply use that. Any vertical support that the pea plants can easily wrap their tendrils around will work.