Peas are one of the easiest plants to grow, they are fast, and you get a really good crop from quite a small amount of soil. Best of all, fresh peas are irresistible, even to many picky eaters.
This video from Kitchen Garden magazine gives a great overview of how to plant peas outside. It shows how to plant the seeds in a little drill, and how to transplant seedlings which you have started indoors. It also covers how to use pea sticks for the plants to grow up, and what a root trainer is and the home made alternatives you can use.
Overall a great introduction to pea growing and worth watching.
They do sow their seeds quite well spaced in the video above, which makes for less thinning and waste. However if you are sowing early in the year when it is still cold and damp, or if you have problems with mice eating some of the peas, you may want to sow more thickly. Pea seeds are dead cheap and you can save your own, which makes them free, so if you have problems getting plants to germinate then try sowing more thickly. If you get a lot of extra you can always eat the thinnings - pea shoots are gorgeous! This video from Allotment Diary shows how thickly you can sow. He also shows us his low cost home made invention for repelling mice.
