How do you grow your peas? Tell me about your techniques - or lack thereof. Do you start them in trays or just soak them and then direct sow. How long and when? I’m curious what you do with birds eating all the seedlings. Peas love water, so I’m curious if you mulch a lot or have other ways. Do you grow peas that get tall, set a lot of vining arms to hold up each, or do you prefer lower growing types?
Peas can take a longer time to adapt to local conditions because they cross less. I want to hear your techniques so I can get a better pea crop this year.
Also - which types of peas do you grow? Where I come from we distinguish roughly four types:
Fresh eating green peas (no edible pod)
Sugar peas (edible pod)
Shelling pea (turns into purée easily)
“Grey pea” (can have other colors though - this one holds up better to cooking, so good for soups or falafel where you want some texture). I think this is equal to what you call Field pea (var. arvense)
I enjoy peas and have grown a fair amount of them. I personally tend to think in categories of snap peas, snow peas, shelling peas (non edible pod), field peas, and dry soup peas. There is definitely overlap with these categories, sometimes just depending more on intended use. Soup peas have been interesting to me because there’s a wide diversity from northern/cool climate areas with a shorter growing season. I love the flavor of dried peas cooked up like dry beans. One standout has been Irish Preans, which are by far the largest dry peas I’ve come across.
I’ve transplanted peas in the past which seems to help with rodents and birds, but have opted for direct sowing as it’s generally easier. I don’t even soak them, but our climate is wet in the spring. Peas also tolerate or may even benefit from crowding, so direct sowing densely in bands can be more efficient than individual transplants. But seed can also get quite expensive.
In our area mulch encourages rodents, so we usually keep the soil clear near the peas. Pole or trellising types seem to yield more per plant, but some bush types have a “hyper-tendril” trait that can allow for broadcasted stands that self-support a bit, which could enable high yields. But if they get too tall they will fall over with no extra support.
Field peas are a common cover crop in my area, I’ve thought that it could be useful to have a hyper-tendril, taller pea crop that yields lots of dry peas and functions as a cover crop as well. In my experience the common field pea/grey pea/arvense is not that tasty eaten fresh but decent as a dry pea. It seems other varieties would be tastier but aren’t often available due to high bulk seed costs.
I’ve been impressed with the pea breeding by Peace Seedlings in our area in Oregon. They have a big selection of unique varieties, most of which are fresh snap/snow peas in a range of colors.
Another big challenge in our area is pea weevils. Apparently they are quite common and growers routinely freeze seeds to kill the weevils inside, but I recently heard home freezers aren’t cold enough, it’s best to freeze down to around 0 degrees F/-18 degrees C. Weevil infestations in saved seeds can become quite a problem.
I just planted the peas today - both shelling peas and snap peas. I soaked and inoculated, then direct sowed. It’s supposed to rain tonight, which is why I chose today. We also set up sprinklers in case it’s a dry spring. The biggest (maybe the only) problem around here is cutworms, which I haven’t found a good solution for. I’ve tried toilet-paper tubes cut in half, but they mostly fall apart or blow away. Toothpicks are also pretty useless. This year I’m just praying for the cutworms to find something else to eat.
Ive grown all the types, my food preference is the soup peas and snow peas. I have permanent trellis, a hog panal, when the peas die back then the cukes get the trellis. Ive only recently had gopher pressure. They eat the young vines, leaves first. We are in lack of rain over 217 days, but just had rainfall last week. So im thinking the desert plants will sprout, thus yeilding something for the varmints to eat besides my peas. Ive put spent coffee grounds everywhere, that worked for a few days. Suppsedly they dont like mint or cayenne pepper. They come by garden thru the same path or hole.
And there are a handfull of mixed varieties, awaiting to see the ones who aren’t tasty for varmints.
My early planting already went to seed, and i collected several handfulls fir saved seed.
I have slug and pigeon pressure. I soak the seeds and wait for the root to show, then sow quite thickly. I grow them on wigwams made out of branches with twigs poking out to try to stop pigeons just sitting on the plants…
edible pods: mangetouts (snow peas) and sugar snaps.
fresh shelling: petit pois/sweet types, old fashioned shelling peas (maybe the “mushy peas”?)
dry/soup peas: yellow peas (that can be used like chick peas), carlin/darker peas, very big ones like Mr Bound?
It seems there is some overlap between categories depending on how the pea was traditionally cooked…
Very interesting topic, thank you!
Peas are some of the best among all crops for me. Completely trouble free and yield a lot of food.
I direct sow, and often I don’t even soak. In fact, I only soak seed from other people in search for weewils (which I don’t have and try to avoid getting them in so I screen for them). My own seed I just dry sow super early and it will be fine. I have not had issues with birds, or maybe I sow so densely that I don’t notice. Water voles sometimes eat up the very young seedlings but only because I’m the first one to sow in the entire “allotment” area — so I can understand they eat up the first greens available. When that happens I just re-sow. Peas crop so fast that I never ended up with not getting a crop by sowing “too late”! But I like early food so I sow super early. Basically the day I physically can; when the soil is workable to 3cm depth.
I also have many volunteer peas all the time from pods I missed, and/ or from the pod residue I get after threshing (which I use as mulch).
I almost exclusively grow tall (2m+) peas. If I find a shortie it means it’s some foreign seed that wasn’t labeled as bush so I assumed it would obviously be tall. Or that it’s a Pisum abyssinicum and stupid me poured it together with the giants!
I observe quite a lof of crossing based on visible Xenia. I think that due to the high humidity I have a higher than usual crossing rate. Same with beans.
I mulch but it’s more like I mulch every square mm as part of weeds control and as a soil health thing so peas happen get mulched, too…
We grow all types of pea, but only varieties up to 1.5m high, along chicken wire fences. We pre-grow the first lot of the season in guttering, then sow direct, no soaking, no watering usually. The soil here is normally moist enough so that pre soaking is not required. We don’t protect from birds, but mulching with grass clippings helps to prevent birds pulling up the young seedlings; they scratch in the mulch instead.
I build trellises. I use massive pea trellises as windbreak for other plants because I grow in a fully exposed and super windy area.. So no, they do not stand on their own as such. Most are field peas that can be used as snow peas when young.
Can you wait a bit? I still have a mess but can find some seeds in a few days. Give me a week or so if ok.
Edit: I soak for a day or so just to see which seeds have larvae on them that haven’t made exit holes yet. I either discard those or pick out the larvae w forceps if important seed.
It’s so interesting to read all your comments. I haven’t come across any systematic grouping of pea subspecies or groups, but clearly we’re using more or less the same categories across countries.
@polarca I think maybe the field peas that can be used as edible pods you mention we call “gråslikærter” (field snow peas).
I have not gotten the package - the queue was getting longer and I already had my turn in the fall, so I didn’t want to stall the package. Nice to hear you stuffed it
I have shelled most of the first planting. Getting different colored peas in each pod. The second planting is just getting pollinated, its all mixed varieties of snow peas, edible pods. I still have birds and rodents attacking the vines, but no diseases as of yet.
Why do you separate the green and brown peas? This is something I’ve asked myself recently (having just done the same). I can clearly see the difference between the round peas (that are good for splitting and for puré) and the wrinkled ones (that are sweet and good for fresh eating). I wish I could identify the field peas and the sugar/snow peas by the seed. I know a lot of the field peas are brown or grey - but I believe they can be other colors too. Is that right?
Hi, I only seperated the different colors for the picture, and to see what the ratio was…as the seeds were different colors in each pod. They are all mixed up and stored inside a glass jar. I started with about 10 varieties of heirlolm sugar/snow peas to grow as a mix. They were different pod colors and different seed colors.
Some drying peas are yellow/pink (round and smooth) but I’m not sure they count as field peas…
I definitely have some seeds that are similar in my edible pods (mangetout and sugar snap) and drying peas. Some might actually be dual purpose? I keep all the different types separate though (for easy harvest).
My second harvest this year. Seems to be more speckled types…supposed to be all sugar snap but maybe a shelling pea is in the mix. I did three succession plantings all with a different mix of sugar and snow pea, edible pod types. I still have the last planting to collect seed from as its just starting to produce pods.
My yellow podded snow peas are all brown+green +purple speckled like that, so it’s definitely within the range of phenotypes (not necessarily a rogue shelling pea).
Ok, phew my goals are to keep the snow and sugar snaps together as a mix. We like to eat the entire pods, either raw or in a recipe. If I can mix a snow pea variety from every continent…ill be content with the resulting diversity. Once I grow enough seed, then id like to cook the extra dried peas to see how they fare in a soup recipe.
(And any other samples from last years harvest if you have to spare)
I stuffed the box 
I’ll see what I can do. Time constraints right now.
