How to Guide Sweet Peas on an Obelisk: Tips for Securing and Training Vines

A sweet pea obelisk, trellis or even a fence is a perfect support for growing your sweet pea vines on. However, when the sweet pea plants are small, it can be a little tricky to guide them to grow up the trellis and they will just grow along the ground instead.

It's better to get your sweet peas up and off the ground as soon as possible to so that they are a little more out of reach of bugs that just might take a nibble!

Easy Garden Obelisk

This is a simple obelisk that I built with the help of a friend. It was inexpensive to make, but I think it looks great! It can be a little tricky to get the sweet peas to 'reach' for the structure because the first horizontal bars are quite high off the ground. This is a large obelisk, so I place a plant at each leg and then one in between.

Materials Needed

I use garden twine and irrigation stakes to help me secure the sweet pea plants to the obelisk.

Secure to the Obelisk Leg

For the plants that will grow up the legs of the obelisk, simply tie a piece of twine around the leg and then tie the twine loosely around the plants to keep them upright. If you simply try to tie the plants to the leg, you risk squashing them as you know the twine tightly enough to hold it around the wood.

Secure the Plants in the Middle

For the plants that will grow up between the legs of the obelisk you will need an anchor to attach the twine, so push an irrigation stake (or something similar) into the ground next to your plant and run twine from that to the first horizontal bar of the obelisk. Then tie a smaller piece of twine onto the vertical piece and use that to tie the sweet pea plant in an upright position. Remember to tie the twine loosely around the plant.

Let Them Grow!

Two months later the vines are growing nicely up the obelisk. I usually would expect them to be larger than this, but they had to put up with slug and snail attacks this year despite the bait we applied to stop this! I haven't used anymore twine to secure the vines to the obelisk. Instead, I just tuck the vines around the upright supports and lifting up the vines that fall over.

Almost Flowering!

Three months later and the sweet pea vines are getting ready to bloom. Usually I would expect to see flowers now, but we had temperature swings which led to the sweet pea flowers falling off