How to build a pea trellis that doesn't suck: give up

Finished pea trellises

After much fussing, near-disaster, hair-tearing, and gnashing of teeth, I have FINALLY succeeded in creating some pea trellises and planting the peas.  They're a little unconventional, but I think they'll work--I've seen some similar ones used for pole beans.  It's a good thing I love fresh peas so much, otherwise the whole mess might not have been worth it.

As usual, I was too optimistic in the plans I laid out in my last post--I did not, in fact, manage to plant the peas over the weekend.  Shocking, right?  (Not!)  I finally made it to Home Depot for the supplies late Sunday afternoon, and, feeling very clever, skipped the ready-made fence and trellis material and bought six 48" stakes, a roll of garden twine, twist ties, and some row markers for good measure.  My plan was to go out and set up some pea trellises Monday after I got out of class, then plant the peas.  I should have known it wouldn't work quite that easily.

I've had trouble with pea trellises before--over the summer at home, I managed to drive myself nearly crazy trying to cut wire mesh from a roll with tin snips that kept catching the soft part of my finger between the handles instead of the wire between the blades.  (Lesson 1: work gloves!)  In the end I had to admit defeat and call for backup.  Yet this time I was sure it would be different, since I've "done this before" and everything--ha!  We've never seen this movie before, have we?

Yup, it was a disaster.  For some reason I still can't really explain, I settled on an S shape as the appropriate one.  This was my first mistake, probably stemming from the objectively ridiculous choice of six stakes.  First, the stakes wouldn't really go in deep enough to stay up.  Then I tried to hammer them in and instead of sinking into the sandy hardpack those stakes bent.  I unbent them and dug a hole for them to sit in, but then the dirt was all loose and they didn't stay up any better than before.  Moved the stakes to a slightly different spot.  Tried again.  They went in this time--yippee!  Tied twine to one stake, and began running the twine back and forth between them to make a trellis.  By the time I reached the top, the first trellis was in an A shape, not an H shape.  Took some of the twine out and strung it a little looser.  Trellis maintained A shape, but the twine just hung loose.  I was losing my marbles at that point, and looked for fixed points to tie the stakes to, in an attempt to correct the tension, since now the whole S was out of whack. I tied them to the spigot at one corner of the plot, and two wooden stakes at the other corners, but I was one corner short, and it seemed to have only made the S wackier, anyway.  It was getting dark, and I'd been out there for an hour and a half fighting with some stakes and twine, and losing.  Who loses to some green plastic sticks from Home Depot? I gave up for the night, too embarrassed to even tear down the mess I'd made.

The right trellis

The next two days I was laid low by the most recent cold, and could barely make it out of bed to go to class, much less come up with a brilliant plan to fix my stupid trellises.  Wednesday night, the weirdest thing to happen to me so far on this garden adventure happened--the answer for the trellises came to me in a dream.  I saw them in two pyramid shapes (perhaps technically two tetrahedrons, but I think I'm safe from the geometry police here), self-supported and with another span of twine zigzagging between the two.  When I went out to water A4 on Thursday, I said what the hell and gave it a shot.  To my immense surprise and relief, it did work, and I still had a little bit of daylight left to actually plant the peas before nightfall.  I'd discounted the value of good old-fashioned giving up, but in this case it seemed to give me less pressure and more brainpower to think about it.  Farming and gardening can be very traditional and governed by what people have done before, often with good reason, but there's no reason it has to be that way if you've got something that will work better for you in your situation at the moment.  I don't need my trellises to win any beauty contests, though I do incidentally think they look pretty cool.  I just need them to support my peas as they grow, and if they do that effectively, that's all that matters about them.