i got sick of agonizing over what i should do for this SINGLE SQUARE of sugar snaps so i just bought a tomato cage and i'm going to tie horizontal pieces of twine between the rings. i hope that'll do. my hubby is in the process of making a nice 4'x6' trellis for our tomatoes and cuke plants. next year i will ask him to make me another one and plant more than one square of the peas to make it worth our effort. if anyone is looking for nylon tomato netting (the kind mel uses in the book for the trellis), you can buy it from the square foot gardening site by the foot. i had a hard time finding it around my way. http://www.squarefootgardening.com/index.php/Garden-Shop/Nylon-Netting/flypage-ask.tpl.html thanks for the responses, and happy gardening everyone! =)

erlyberd - I started a few about 5 weeks ago. Those are my test plants, and the biggest one is only about 6 inches tall. But they've been under very weak lights, and I've only just started putting them outside. So I can't really predict how big my other plants will get from those. I started planting the rest on April 13. These are going outside right after they sprout, whenever the weather seems ok. I just got done putting the rest of my seeds in damp coffee filters, so I could get them started before the full moon. Now I have to finish putting them in blocks, before they all start germinating, and I have a big mess of tangled roots. I think my plants will be a lot shorter than yours, while still in the tunnel. By the time most of mine are 6 weeks old, I should be able to start transplanting. But some will probably be stuck in the tunnel past 6 weeks, so those could start getting too big. I'm hoping I can get by with a 22"-23" height for most of them, so I won't have to buy more plastic. Then deal with the rest later, if they start getting too big.

As long as there is something for the beans to climb, they will keep going. Last year I had a six foot trellis on a 3 foot raised bed. When they got to the top of the trellis, they continued to grow on the branches of a nearby tree. Then they were really hard to harvest. I finally just let that plant go to seed and harvested off of the other plants. But if they get above the top of your trellis, you can always turn them around to go back down. They do have a tendency to try and grow up though, so in this case you will probably need to tie them on occasionally

Crime isn’t an issue in my part of the city. However porch pirates know no city boundaries... they hit everywhere... and that we have just like all the other neighborhoods around us. Watching deliveries on my security cams... I bet the delivery people will leave packages on the outside of the fence if it’s tall and they think it’s locked. Also if you drive around my neighborhood during the day on the weekend. Many neighbors are outside relaxing on patio chairs sipping cocktails and waving & smiling at all the neighbors driving by while kids are out playing. So I wanted to have an outdoor courtyard in front of the house as a weekend outdoor living space... but more modern than just having a porch. I was also thinking 4ft, just wanted to be sure... many of the other houses in the neighborhood with the same floor plan have a 4ft fence in the same area... but closer to the house... just to close off the entry way.