Hooked on beans, eh? Welcome to the club. :-)

You will be eating beans soon, now that they are in bloom. It's surprising how fast the pods form up.

I haven't grown vegetables in containers, so I can't help with that question. Someone else will.

Your info on peas sounds right to me, as far as it goes. I think 1cm is on the border line of thickness for supports but probably will work. Bean vines wrap themselves around the trellis, so poles a few cms thick will work. Peas just grasp with their tendrils.

Most pea varieties are low growing, much shorter than pole beans. These varieties are sometimes called "self supporting" because they can be grown without a trellis if planted in a double row. Trellises make for a tidier arrangement though. There are only a few varieties which grow tall. Check the specifications for the variety you want to grow.

Jim

Alderman is a good tall pea and there are a few tall sugar snaps as well as some edible podded ones.

Slashy, you said you might like something decorative. Here is something I came across on the vegetable forum:

"..."Blue Podded Soup Peas", which don't really have blue pods (more like purplish-brown), but the pods are really easy to spot because of their color, AND the peavines have GORGEOUS big rosy-red blossoms. The blue podded peas grow on huge vigorous vines and unfortunately do need to be trellised." I don't know of a source for seeds.

Also, Hyacinth beans are _very_ decorative, possibly the most decorative of all beans. But they would be for the warm season. You will find lots of information on them if you search.

And then, of course, there are Scarlet Runner beans.

Jim

For pea varieties, I like Sugar Snap a lot. Peas and shell are both edible (and incredibly sweet). The peas don't get shelled; you eat the whole thing, pod and peas inside. I forgot if they need to be stringed.....

I especially liked them when left on the vines long enough for the peas to grow large inside the pod (but not left so long that the pods change color from green toward yellow). The plumper the peas inside the pod, the sweeter the whole thing (peas and pod) tasted.

When used in cooking, I just cut the pods in two or more pieces. They hardly need cooking, just enough heat to bring them up to temperature of the dish.

This year was my first growing peas, and the Sugar Snap was par excellence. IMO, it's superior to the traditional English pea, b'c Sugar Snap does not need to be shelled, and the pod is sweet and edible (as sweet as the peas). No waste since both peas and pods are eaten.

Mine grew 7 ft up a trellis, but would have done better if we'd had more rain. They like their water.

Slashy, if you have space, you could also try growing Lathyrus Odoratus flowers. They are delightful cut flowers. I read that the more you cut, the more flowers they send up.

Reminder, don't forget to use inoculant when you plant legume seeds...... Some folks say the harvest gets bigger/better with inoculant.

Good luck with your garden, and keep us posted....

I'll just add a few things to the comments above.

Pole beans have done well for me in large pots, even two years in a row in the same soil. The yield is less than it would be in the ground, but still good. Never tried peas in pots, but I would guess that the yield would be too small to grow large quantities of green-shell peas. Some varieties of snow peas or sugar snaps have long vines, and might be the best choice. They would continue to bear over a long period.

Peas as a Winter crop...

Before moving to Wisconsin in the 90's, I gardened for many years in Southern California. It has a climate very similar to much of Australia... I know this because I visited Perth twice in the 80's, including one visit in Winter. If there was any frost at all in San Diego, it was light, and brief; most plants would recover. I grew peas there as a winter crop, along with garlic, onions, and cole crops. The peas grew vigorously in the cooler weather, and bore heavily... Slashy, your results would probably be similarly successful.

Wow, thanks everyone for the responses- these are really, really useful!

I didn't realise that peas were normally much shorter than beans (the only ones I've seen growing are my friend's snow peas which are as tall as my beans are), so it's good to know to look for the taller, vining varieties for the front. I suspect that because, as zeedman mentions, Sydney winters are pretty ideal pea-growing weather I might grow peas in lots of other places as well as on the porch- in which case I can experiment with a few different varieties hopefully!

Sugar-snap is a name I hear lots so definitely want to give that one a shot, especially if it grows long & viney and can inherit the job of making my security grilles less hideous.

p.s harvested my first handful of beans today, yay! And the purple flowers on "Purple King" are absolutely stunning, but the pods aren't the most purple of purple things I've ever seen.