mind your peas and queues

[bretty666]

Sorry about the silly title..its just me trying to be clever..anyway..i only have 5meters by 1.8mhigh of pea and bean netting. yet i want to grow giant purple runners.some big white bean ones and some normal runners...thats what i planned to put on the left half of the support..on the right i intended on doing just peas...now.....i found some mange tout seeds/peas and i want to cram them in aswell...will i.be able to grow all these in such a close proximity....im a bit worried my mange touts will turn into runner mange or my normal peas will be tout peas and my runners will be ..who knows...so my question is...do they cross pollinate and am i being silly with the amount i want to plant and do they suffer badly from over crowding or are they quite prolific (i think thats the word i mean?)but all of that said...i would rip everything out and just have mange touts if i had to..they ate very expensive here and they all come from zimbabwe and we do loads of asian cooking

[messygarden]

Cross pollination wouldn't b a problem. Your problem is space, if you like mangetout so much you cant really fit anything else in 5 metres to be honest... Have 4 metres for mangetout and 1 for runners, thats what i would do. You will find you don't like runners that much and then you just wasted space

[rustylady]

Cross pollination will only be a problem if you want to save seeds to grow next year. Won't affect your crops this year.

[Thelma Sanders]

4m of mangetout

I'd just grow some mangetout in a horse shoe shape around one end

[bretty666]

Thanks for the advice peeps.....iv decided to make a live teepee play house for my kids!!! Yup.....im bonkers

[Bill HH]

Cramming too much in can be false economy, None of them do any good and you have a lousy harvest. They compete for food, light and water. Better to give one thing lots of room.

[bretty666]

I do agree bill. but... i couldnt find another area of my garden where shading out wouldnt be an issue.i put my runners in anyway,i only had seven beans to plant so they are in now and im left with about a meter now between my bormal peas which have been in about two weeks maybe a bit more (they are looking fantastic!) so i will have a metre of mange touts on there aswell and make a teepea for the kids aswell with m.ts covering it

[Alison]

Cross pollination will only be a problem if you want to save seeds to grow next year. Won't affect your crops this year.

And it's only the runners you need to worry about even then, the peas and mange tout are very difficult to cross and can't cross with the runners anyway. The runners however are potentially quite promiscuous.


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[Thelma Sanders]

Peas are usually sown about 10 seeds per foot run, that's not really cramming them in.....

They also don't mind growing in a position that gets some shade, they only get afternoon sun in my garden

[Two_Sheds]

Peas are usually sown about 10 seeds per foot

Or each pea 5cm apart from its neighbour, in new money

[bretty666]

Thank you gor that two sheds!!! I cant work imperial ..when.i go back to the uk i keep my gps in kilometers ..otherwise it says stuff like "in 200 yards turn left" what thr hell is a yard!!!

[Alison]

Thank you gor that two sheds!!! I cant work imperial ..when.i go back to the uk i keep my gps in kilometers ..otherwise it says stuff like "in 200 yards turn left" what thr hell is a yard!!!

I always covert to good old fashioned imperial even though at my age I should have been brought up on metric.


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