Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. We have a brand new member of the household and it seems diapers and feedings take precedence over all else. I also had to learn how to post pics. Tansymoon, I don't know if you can bring a cattle panel home in a van. The ones I bought were 52 inches wide by 16 feet long. The store had a policy against loading 16 foot long items into a pick up bed (good call) so I had to bring a trailer. I bought mine at a local lumber yard called Lumber 2. They were also available at Atwood's Farm and Home, and Tractor Supply Company, as well as several local farm stores. Farfaraway, Yes, you can tuck the arch inside the frame of a raised bed, and I'd encourage it. I mentioned that I placed mine using railroad ties. I tried eliminating this step on one pair of arches and was sorry. Because the railroad ties were not there, when I pulled down to create the curve of the arch, the curve came in lower on the arch than was pleasing to my eye. (If someone will tell me how I can tell you to look at my photobucket, the misproportioned arch is there.) I dont' recommend using the roll of fencing for this application, although you can probably do other styles of trellis that would look quite nice. I don't believe the roll of fencing will be stiff enough to hold its shape. I think planting cool weather lettuce and spinach under the cover of peas will probably extend their growing season as things warm up. I haven't actually grown peas, just cukes on the trellis last summer, but peas were my (now unlikely) plan before we were blessed with diapers and feedings. I did not pull them out, because they were attractive as winter interest with white lights and later with icicles. Also, they marked the openings to my woodland paths, so I'm thinking they are semi permanent. My only casualty came from a tree crashing on one during our unprecedented December ice storm. The picture below shows two cattle panels together. After folding, but before bending, I tied them together with green plastic coated gardening twist tie stuff. With two together each side was 104" long. You can see the start of a couple of purple hyacinth beans at the front side. In addition, I planted 25 cukes along each side, one about every four inches. The cukes dangled inside the arch, which made for easy picking. The deer and racoons will vouch for that statement. "> My apologies that the photo is sideways and too big. The editing software at photobucket doesn't seem to like me. I played with it for two hours and it's time to move on.

Wow, looking good! I like the trellises. I have a couple A-frames, which work great for vining squash, but those completely vertical ones are perfect for peas and cucumbers. Were these difficult to build? I decided not to grow sugar snap peas this year, as my plants only seemed to produce enough for me to pop a couple off the vine at a time. They are so good fresh from the vine. Looks like you've got plenty though :)

Galina, have you grown the Carouby de Maussane? I tried growing peas by that name last year as a snow pea, and they were fairly good. But I had some doubt about the purity of the seed that I received; my plants were white-flowered, when my references tell me that it is a purple-flowered variety. The seed came from a seed swap with someone who grows many peas, so a mixup is possible.

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! =)