Quick Reference
When to Start |
As soon as the ground can be worked.
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Crop Rotation |
Avoid following peas or other types of beans
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How To Plant |
Plant seeds 1" deep in rows spaced 6-9" away from support
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Spacing and Support |
Start seeds 2" apart on a trellis, or place poles 6" apart. Once they are tall enough direct the plant up the trellis or around the pole
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When to Harvest |
For snap peas once pods are the size of your pinky. Harvest early and often. For shelling peas once you can see the shape of the individual peas inside.
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Storage |
Smaller pods can be frozen whole. Once pods become overgrown harvest the peas inside and toss the pods in the compost.
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Peas are one of those things most people have a negative association with, mostly because they remember the nasty can of mush in sugar sauce their mother used to put next to the frozen corn and chicken on your dinner plate as a kid. Growing snap peas is an entirely different experience. Even kids will go crazy for the sweet, juicy, crispy flavor of sugar snap peas. Being able to pick their own right off the vine and eat it is one of the things that got our girls interested in the garden and eating vegetables in general. If you've never grown your own peas you don't know how good they can be - peas start to lose their sweetness the second the are picked. So the faster they make it from the vine to your mouth, the better they will taste. Best case scenario the ones at the grocery store were picked over a week ago. Give one that's only a few seconds old a try to see for yourself.
When To Start |
Peas are one of those "as soon as the soil can be worked" vegetables, but of course that is oversimplifying it. You can definitely plant your seeds whenever you want, but they will only germinate and grow when the soil reaches a certain temperature. Seeds will germinate when the soil is between 40-75 degrees, and optimal growing temperature is 60-65 degrees. Have we ever actually considered the soil temperature? No, we haven't. After 6 months locked inside I'm getting my garden going as soon as humanly possible.
Peas are a cold tolerant plant that hates the heat of mid-summer. Once you get to late June/early July the plant will start to die back. However since it does grow so quickly and do well in cold temps, you can plant a 2nd wave in late August/early September when the nights start to get cool again but the soil is still plenty warm from the sunny days. |
Crop Rotation |
Avoid planting peas in the same spot that pole beans or any member of the bean family grew in the previous year.
For you forward thinkers out there, corn does really well when it follows peas. This is because beans and peas add nitrogen to the soil as they grow, something corn desperately needs to grow itself. Click here to read about crop rotation and why it is so important It's important to not only avoid planting the same crop in the same spot 2 years in a row, but you also have to avoid plants in the same family as they typically draw on the same nutrients and have issues with the same pests. Click here to learn more about plant families and find a chart showing which ones are related. |
How to Plant |
Direct sow seeds right into the garden when the final frost of the spring has passed. Seeds should be planted fairly deep, about 1" below the surface.
We plant most of our garden from seed and to speed up the process we have created a little "tool" to help us measure the soil depth. All we did was take an old paint brush and scored a line at 1/4", 1/2", 3/4", 1", and 2". Then you just go down the line where you are going to plant and poke little holes in the soil down to the required depth. |
Spacing and Support |
On a Trellis: We have had a lot of success growing peas up a trellis made of chicken wire. It allows you to grow a ton of peas in a small space and the vines grow straight up the fence with little to no help at all. Plant seeds every 2" spaced about 6-9" away from the trellis. You don't want to plant them too close because the trellis will shade the plants and stunt their growth. Once they are about a foot tall they may need some help grabbing on to the trellis and/or untangling them from the plant next to them. After they grab hold of the trellis the plant will do the rest of the work, growing upward and wrapping its tendrils around the support as it grows.
On a pole: If you don't want to build a trellis you can grow peas like pole beans with skinny bamboo or some other poles/sticks in the ground to support the vines. Place your poles about 6" apart and plant 3-4 seeds around the pole. Just make sure your pole is firmly planted in the ground before the seeds. As the plant grows you'll need to tie the vines to the pole like a tomato plant. They also sell some really cool tee-pees, obelisks, and other fancy objects to grow peas on. They would also do great on chain link fences or really anything with a similar pattern for the vines to grab onto. |
Harvesting |
Snap peas taste best when they are about the size on your pinky. The bigger they get from here, the more fibrous and less sweet they become. If you can keep up when they are young, the more you pick the more you will get. Once the plant has produced several large pods with fully grown seeds inside, it will stop flowering/producing. So the more you pick, the longer you can prevent it from getting to this stage.
Once you do get to the point where it's late in the growing cycle and the pods are mostly overgrown, leave them on the vine to fatten up as shell peas. Its a little bit tedious but depending on your outlook a bit of a zen like experience to sit down and tear open pea pod after pea pod. Might be a good activity to keep the kids quiet for a little while and believe it or not they will eat the peas like popcorn once they are out. Toss the pods in the compost or even better work into the dirt where you plan to plant corn next year. |
What to do with way too many of them |
Freeze them: No, frozen peas aren't very exciting and no they will never taste great on their own again, but they are still great in soups and stir-frys. The trick is to not boil them first, just toss them in right from the freezer bag when you're just about done cooking and they won't be as soggy.
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How Are We Doing?
2019
March 30th - We planted an 11' row of Organic Oregon Giant Snow Peas. Cost was $2.90 for a 2 oz. package of seeds. We only used about 1/2 the package so we have more than enough for a second planting in the fall.
March 30th - We planted an 11' row of Organic Oregon Giant Snow Peas. Cost was $2.90 for a 2 oz. package of seeds. We only used about 1/2 the package so we have more than enough for a second planting in the fall.