I've never tried to succession plant beans over peas, so I can't personally testify to whether it would work or not. My suspicion is that it would not work very well.

You have already stated one potential problem (following a vegetable with another member of the same family), which could cause nutrient or disease issues. Additionally, because I assume from your zone that you have a short season, the growing times would need to overlap considerably. You would need to plant the beans even before the peas were mature, while avoiding root damage to the peas. With only a fixed amount of nutrients & sunlight, I don't know how that would work out.

Undoubtedly the reason you are looking at succession planting is to get the best utilization from the space. IMO, peas are not especially high yielders, so in a choice between peas and pole beans, I'd pick beans every time. Of course, if you really like fresh snap peas, your priorities might be different.

You could grow a longer-season climbing pea (such as some of the sugar snaps) then follow with a Fall planting of broccoli, chard, beets, or carrots. It's also possible that it might work out better to plant a quick crop of bush beans in Spring, cut them down immediately after harvest, and follow with a Fall crop of peas. Since the peas are fairly frost tolerant, this would extend the season in the other direction, as opposed to planting the peas first... but this way, there would be no overlap.

That's just a few possibilities, and there are many others. Experiment! And if you do follow beans with peas (or vice versa) please come back to let us know your results. ;-)

I tried this on my 30 ft trellis, and had the timing problem Zeedman mentions - the peas were just starting to pod when the beans should've been planted. An uncomfortable situation for everyone concerned:)

I trellis my squash/melons/cucumbers on an angled trellis, so I'm thinking to try the peas before the curcurbits this year. Also some bush peas before corn and maybe sweet potatoes. Maybe that'll do better.

I am determined to get a good harvest of shelling peas this year, which seems to mean many many plants.

~emmers