Easy peasy?

In Tasmania peas are a very popular food garden crop and many beginning food gardeners plant them, but then, like me, find out that peas are not always 'easy peasy'.  In this blog post I share my experiences with growing peas and what I learnt over the years.

The wonderful book Heirloom Vegetables, a Guide to their History and Varieties by Simon Rickard says about the history of peas:
'Peas (Pisum sativum) are native to the Eastern Mediterranean where they grow, flower and die in the brief rainy weeks of the Mediterranean spring.  Pea remains have been found at Neolithic sites in Turkey dating back 10,000 years.  In those days it would have been foolhardy to harvest and eat your pea crop fresh during summer's time of plenty, when they could mean the difference between starvation or survival in winter.  Peas were a crop for drying and storing, to be used as a food-source over winter.'

Now let's have a look at how to successfully grow and harvest peas today.

Modern peas will grow in many soils, but will perform best if pH is between 6 and 7, the organic matter content of your soil is high, but not nitrogen-rich, and the soil is well-draining.  It is best not to add blood and bone or other nitrogen containing fertilisers to your soil before sowing peas, because the peas will love the nitrogen and focus on forming leaves, not flowers. Peas (and beans) play an important role in crop rotation (see a separate post on crop rotation on this blog).

There are three types of peas:

1. Climbers that go as high as two metres and that produce the biggest crop of the three types, but require a more substantial frame that can cope with weight and wind
2. Semi-climbing varieties, up to 1 metre high, for which a mesh like the green mesh in the first photo below is ideal
3. Dwarf or bush varieties that become up to ½ metre high.  For these you could use gumtree twigs that you stick into the ground at 45 degrees as a lattice.

One winter, more than a decade ago, I had great difficulty getting any peas to germinate.  Was that because the weather was too wet and they all rotted away in the ground?  Or was it because the seed was not viable?  I was puzzled.

I had done all the right things when planting my peas:

• I added some well-matured compost to my soil
• I made shallow trenches with a depth of around twice the diameter of a pea
• I planted peas around 5 centimetres apart in each row with rows at least 60 centimeters apart
• Before covering the rows with soil I marked each row with sticks
• Then I covered them with soil and compacted that with my hand to make sure there were no air bubbles in the soil
• I watered the rows just enough to make sure that the soil was moist but not drenched
• I monitored moisture levels during the next fortnight (that it the time it usually takes for peas to appear above ground).

Only a few peas came up.  I sowed more and the same happened again.  Mystified, I went out one night and learnt 'pea-lesson number 1': slugs and snails love the smell and taste of fresh young pea sprouts, and if allowed to do their thing, will eat every pea that comes up as soon as it emerges.

So now, after sowing peas, I visit my pea-patch every night (until my pea plants are around 10 centimeters high) with a torch and squash any slug or snail that dares to come close.  There are of course other methods to deal with slugs and snails, but I just do not trust they will always work.

Peas emerging

By the way, always sow peas directly in your garden.  Peas are an example of a vegetable that does not take kindly to being transplanted from punnets.

My suburb is a 'blackbird haven'.  Very clever birds they are and they all have their territory.  One day I noticed that the blackbird that had made my garden its patch, flew down almost immediately after I left the garden and, in search for worms and grubs, made a complete mess of the area I had just sown with peas.

So now, after sowing peas (and other vegie seeds), I immediately protect my seeds by putting mesh over the soil and I leave it there until a fortnight later I see the first plants emerge.  If I would forget this, even for just a short time, the whole exercise would be for nothing, and I would find most peas on top of my soil and all over my patch.

When considering what a vegetable or fruit needs, it is often good to think about what circumstances its wild ancestors grew in.  The wonderful Heirloom Vegetables book (see above) says 'wild peas grow, flower and die in the brief rainy weeks of the Mediterranean spring.'  If you look up 'pea' (Pisum sativum) in Wikipedia one of the things you find is that 'peas are a cool season crop in many parts of the world.  Planting can take place from winter to early summer.'

After harvesting my first crop of peas of the season, in most summers I used to plant a second lot.  The result (peas sown in December or January) was in most cases very disappointing.  Plants did not prosper, far fewer peas, and plants were soon overwhelmed by mildew.

So now I grow my peas over winter.  This is what I did in 2010 (from my garden diary):

• peas sown 24 July
• above ground 8 August (it typically takes around a fortnight)
• on that date I sowed new seeds in the few spots where nothing came up
• first peas picked on 12 November (around 3½ month after sowing)
• lots of peas ripe in the last week of November
• bushes removed 13 December (mildew)

In other years the pattern has been much the same.  Sometimes I have sown slightly earlier or later, but always in July or August.  In some years I picked my last peas (and removed bushes) in early January.  If you are keen on fresh peas for Christmas, based on my experiences over a number of years, sow them mid August.  This timetable would be for a garden with only one or two frosts per year.

If you get frost in your garden in winter, make sure you do not sow peas too early.  If you do, bushes may flower in July or August and flowers may fall off after a frosty morning and you will not get any peas.

Learning what your food-garden's micro-climate is like, is an important factor in making your garden a success. I don't have a great memory, so I try to document everything that happens in my garden in a garden diary (there is a separate post on this subject in this blog).

Peas flowering

There are other things I learnt about growing peas that, I think, are worth sharing.

I used to sow double rows of peas, two parallel rows around 10 centimeters apart.  Then, when the peas came up, I used to put mesh (the green mesh in the photo above) in between these two rows, so one trellis supports two rows.  I found over the years that the peas on the side of the trellis that received shade did far less well than the peas on the sunny side, so now I sow single rows and where possible I position the rows East - West, so all bushes face the sun.  I also leave enough space between rows (at least 60 centimetres) to maximise direct sun light on all peas.

Some of the conventional seed companies boast about protecting their pea seeds against rotting by coating them with (poisonous) green-grey stuff.
I have used my own un-treated seed for years and have found that very few of my unprotected pea seeds rot.  In 2011 for instance there was five days of rain just after I sowed my peas on 3 August and germination, a fortnight later, was fine.  Of course soil that does not have good drainage can make seed rot.  Good drainage is not just important for germination.  Plants, once germinated, will also suffer if your soil is soggy, so I suggest that if your seed rots in your soil, you improve drainage, rather than changing to seed that has been treated against rotting.

Saving your own seed means next year's crop comes at no cost and, with peas, it is really easy.  Just put in a dry place some of the pods that have become a bit too big and that perhaps are no longer the light-green colour fresh pods have and you have next year's seeds.

Because I always use last year's seed I have had no problem with pea seed not being viable. The general rule with any seed is use the most recent seed you can get.  Having said that, it is astonishing to hear that sometimes seeds dug up in archeological excavations are still viable after thousands of years.  For peas most sources recommend to use seed no older than four years.

If you doubt whether seed you have will germinate, why not do a simple germination test.  Wrap a few seeds in paper towel, then thoroughly wet it with a sprayer.  Keep your paper towel moist for a week in medium temperatures and light and your dried peas (on the right in the photo below) will become round balls with an emerging sprout (on the left in the photo below), if the seed is viable.

A pea after 5 days of soaking compared to a dry one

Some people recommend that in order to speed up germination you soak all your seeds this way, then carefully sow them after 5 days.  I found that this does not speed things up (and you have to be very gentle when sowing) compared to sowing dried seeds and keeping your soil moist.

While growing up, your pea bushes may need a bit of twine parallel to the ground halfway up the trellis to make sure they attach themselves to the trellis.  Spraying your pea bushes with seaweed extract once a week will make them stronger and increase your crop.  Apart from this, little is needed, except watering if the weather is dry.

3½ to 4 month after sowing you might have an abundant pea crop like this:

A plentiful crop

At this stage, continuously picking peas that are just right, will promote forming of new flowers and extend your cropping season. Daytime temperatures during flowering are really important. Peas being a cool-climate vegetable, in temperatures above 25 degrees Celsius will form fewer flowers.

In my garden there always comes a moment when my pea bushes begin to look like this:

Powdery mildew has destroyed these bushes

Until recently I accepted that my pea bushes, after a good crop, always end up covered in mildew. Now I have found ways to avoid or minimise Powdery Mildew (for full info on Powdery Mildew see the post on this subject on this blog).

You may avoid Powdery Mildew on your peas by only watering at ground level. If Powdery Mildew arrives, spray with milk spray (9 parts water + 1 part milk) and repeat this once a week. This will prolong the life of your pea bushes and your pea harvest.

This is where I could end this post, but there is one more thing I am going to add.

This year (2015), going against everything I learnt over the years, I sowed one row of peas on 10 January, in the middle of a mostly cool summer with an unpredictable mix of hot, cold, humid, sunny, cloudy and rainy days, just to see what the result would be.

I was lucky. Daytime maximum temperatures were not continuously above 25 degrees. Mildew did not blow in from somewhere until the main crop had ripened. When it did, I sprayed with milk mix and it worked. One visitor did not think she was seeing straight when looking at a healthy row of peas in March. As I said, it was just luck, only worth the gamble if you accept that peas are essentially a cool-weather vegetable that in most summers will not give great results.

Happy peaing!