In your garden: Make growing veg easy-peasy

Gardening books describe growing peas successfully as "not easy". But sweet, fresh peas are one of the nation's favourites, either eaten straight from the pod or lightly boiled. The method I use takes effort, but produces long, well-filled pods. Also, it's much easier in the kitchen to shell a few pods of ten peas each rather than a lot with only three or four.

As with many of my crops, plants are raised in modules. I grow two double rows; each double row has 28 plants. The modules used have 40 cells, so two trays give plenty of plants and allow only the strongest growing to be used.

After filling the modules with seed compost, thin, two-foot canes are inserted right down to the bottom of the cells, and then three peas per cell are sown. Weak seedlings are cut off at soil level. As the plants grow they are tied loosely to the canes with soft acrylic knitting wool. Tendrils and side shoots are cut off. When the plants reach the top of the canes they are hardened off.

An advantage of raising peas in the greenhouse is that damaging attacks of pea weevil on vulnerable seedlings are avoided. The weevils seem to lose interest in plants once they are two feet high.

For planting out I use pairs of eight-foot canes pushed into the ground 18 inches apart to form an inverted V, tied together at the top and also to a ridge cane that runs the length of the row. The pairs of canes are one foot apart.

A bulb planter is used to make holes deep enough for the whole of the root ball formed in the module cell. The holes are made on the inside of the canes so they protect them from being stood on. The tops of the short canes are tied to the main canes as is further growth using nine-inch lengths of old plastic covered copper telephone wire. The wires are wound tightly round the canes. At the end of the season they are left in place for next season. All the tendrils and side shoots are removed.

Hurst Greenshaft is a reliable variety. I harvest twice a week and take home about 100 pods each with about ten peas.

• George Sutherland is a past president of the Federation of Edinburgh and District Allotments and Gardens Association