The pea: it’s a staple in soups, where it has the tendency to form a thick sludge on the bottom of your pot when you’re not looking. But oh, the taste of the fresh-picked pea in the summer. There’s really nothing better. How can you get that taste for yourself? Grow your own, of course!
Luckily, the pea is quite simple to grow.
It’s somewhat shade tolerant. Peas love my partial shade garden, which is a good thing because most other fruits and vegetables really don’t like it very much. If you have full sun, plant early.
It grows early in the season. While the planting time for peas varies from zone to zone, peas and greens are two of the very earliest crops you can grow.
It comes in many different varieties, including climbing and low-growing varieties. Look on the pea package to see how high the pea will be. Peas will often cling onto each other for support, but this makes it more challenging to harvest the mass of peas later on. It’s best to use a trellis.
Peas also add nitrogen to the soil. Nitrogen is part of fertilizers, and peas are legumes, which means that they have the ability to move nitrogen from the air into the soil. When you are finished with the pea plants, your soil is left richer than before. What a concept!
It’s also relatively easy to save pea seeds. If your child enjoys science experiments or you have a particularly tasty pea that you want to save, simply let some of the best-looking pods shrivel on the vine. When they are dry, take out the peas and store them in a cool, dry place until next spring.
One thing to watch with peas: make sure that you know whether your peas have an edible pod, whether they’re a shelling pea, or whether they are a soup pea. Edible pod peas can be eaten whole, pod and all. They are ideal for stir fries. Shelling peas grow nice, fat peas inside and the peas are removed from the pod before eating. Soup peas are good to dry, but they’re not nearly as tasty as the shelling or edible pod peas when you eat them fresh.
Growing your first garden? Start with peas. They’re the flavor of early summer.
Peas out!
Image courtesy of amarsafey at Stock Exchange.