Getting creative in the garden: build a trellis for your snap peas

Some of you may have noticed we recently ran out of materials to assemble trellises for the snap pea porch pots. We’ve still been sharing those container gardens but y’all will need to get creative with your own trellis-building!

Yum! Cascadia Snap Peas freshly-harvested from a school garden

If you have any circular metal tomato cages around, those are just right for trellising snap peas in a bigger pot (they also work well for cucumbers and other vining plants – not just tomatoes!). They often are available in some fun colors, too.

Metal tomato cage

Here’s a great photo from One Hundred Dollars A Month of a tomato cage being used as a snap pea trellis. They’ve gone the route of flipping theirs upside down, but that leaves some pretty pokey bits sticking out and in our experience it works just as well right-side up.
(Don’t get confused if you visit their site and see gardening tips – they live in Maine so the climate and seasons are somewhat different than ours in the Pacific NW.)

These peas are growing in pots with tomato cages for trellising

This Pea Tripod Tutorial from Seattle Urban Farm Company is pretty simple and could be done with smaller/shorter sticks fairly easily, to make it fit into a container garden.

Finished pea tripod from Seattle Urban Farm Company tutorial

Our friends at Common Threads Farm in Bellingham have also put together this Pea Trellis Design & Building Activity that is pretty cool.

Trellis from instructions by Common Threads Farm in Bellingham, WA

What are some of the creative ways you have built trellises or other supporting structures for plants in your garden?