How to Make a Trellis out of Chopsticks

1. Place one chopstick horizontally across the 2 vertical sticks, as pictured above. The first horizontal stick should be low, but not too low (too low won’t help the vines latch on or give any support). 
2. Your lower horizontal stick should touch the left and right vertical stick once. Glue the lower horizontal stick to these areas. Pictured below is the lower horizontal stick touching the left vertical stick. Your end result should look similar. 
3. Loop twine underneath each area the horizontal stick meets the left and right vertical stick, then tie three times (pictures depicting this are shown farther below). It’s pretty much the same process as when you were creating the vertical sticks. Make sure to cut off any loose ends of the twine using the scissors. 
4. Repeat this process for the upper horizontal stick. The upper horizontal stick should be up higher on the trellis, and since the vertical sticks are on an angle, the upper horizontal stick should be longer.

If you can’t manage to find a longer chopstick than the ones you’ve been using, you might have to elongate one by gluing and tying an extra chopstick onto it (just follow the same process as though you were creating another vertical stick – this would mean you’d need 7 chopsticks total, and not 6). I managed to find a long chopstick, which made my life a little easier.

If your upper horizontal chopstick isn’t long enough, it won’t reach the vertical ones at all, which is a problem. Keep in mind the taller your trellis, the more elongated each horizontal chopstick would need to be.

This is how your trellis should look once completed. Do you see where each chopstick links with one another?

If you wanted to, you could add a 3rd horizontal stick in between the lower and upper sticks, but it’s not essential. It might give your plants a little extra support, and looking back I kind of wish I did add a 3rd stick. However, with that said, my plants are doing fairly well now. They’re actually budding flowers, which is the first sign peas will be on the way soon!

This pea plant is doing fairly well, despite the yellowed and dried leaves in certain areas. Can you see the white flower bud?

Honestly, I’m pretty proud of my pea plants. They’ve come a long way. They’re not perfect (as you can probably see from the pictures) and tend to lean in weird ways, and have dried leaves, but they’re mine. I grew them from little seeds. I’m happy to see they’re hanging in there and have been with me for a good portion of the summer. I’m looking forward to harvesting the peas they make and growing more in the future! 

This pea plant appears to be doing the best and has the most green leaves out of 4 plants. Check out the white flower bud on this one!

To grow your own organic peas, here’s the sort I used. It’s relatively easy to grow peas from seed. They are sturdy little plants and require only average soil with decent drainage, plenty of sun and water, and a trellis. Here’s the soil I use (I like to keep everything organic). My only regret is that I didn’t make this trellis sooner, so the babies would’ve had something to latch onto earlier (besides each other). 

Despite that, my plant babies are still hanging in there. Let this be a lesson to anyone who thinks they don’t have enough room to grow plants in their house. They do. Trust me. I didn’t think I did either, but moments like this prove otherwise. You don’t need room to grow plants. You just need determination. Oh, and a trellis.