How to Grow Peas

This is the first instalment in my series of How to Grow guides. It’s quite different from my Vegetable Patch from Scratch series, which is organised by stage, covering everything from site analysis to crop rotation to green manure crops. This new series is for people who want to know everything there is to know about how to grow carrots. Or cabbages. Or peas – you name it.

Each instalment of How to Grow covers:

• my favourite varieties

• when to plant for greatest success

• common problems

• phenological indicators

• how to prepare the soil and plant

• layout and spacing.

I’m not going to bombard you with them all at once. I’m aiming to send one guide per month to coincide with a timely moment in the gardening calendar. Together they will form a library that you’ll be able to access any time here.

If you’d like them to bypass your inbox, no problem: click here to update your preferences and uncheck the “How to Grow Guides” checkbox.

The vegetable crop that I’m most sentimental about is tomatoes. But I’ve come to realise that for many of my readers, it’s peas that evoke the strongest memories. My partner Caryn often talks about sitting at the kitchen table with her grandmother chatting away while they shelled peas together. Every spring I watch her do the same thing with our kids. That is, if the little ratbags leave any for us to harvest and bring inside.

Peas are a great crop to introduce children to gardening. Our youngsters will sit in the vegetable patch for ages, carefully picking the plump pods and extracting the juicy peas to eat right there and then. You can easily save the seeds and replant them to produce the next crop. This allows children to experience the whole life cycle of the plant. My son Angus sowed, tended and harvested this crop all by himself.

To pea, or not to pea?

And the answer to that question is a resounding yes!

Snow peas and dwarf peas, sugar snaps and telephone peas. There’s a pea for every gardener’s taste. There are even sweet peas, which produce flowers that look and smell amazing, but don’t try to eat them, they’re toxic.

Peas can be very productive for a relatively small footprint, but the key to maximising the space is using a trellis.

You don’t need a trellis, especially for the dwarf varieties of peas. But using one will allow you to fit more into your vegetable patch and can help to improve airflow (thereby reducing pest and disease issues).

There are lots of different trellis options to consider – read about them here.

Common problems when growing peas

Every crop of peas I have ever grown has been overwhelmed by fungus. It starts from the bottom of the plant and slowly rises up through the foliage over the course of a few weeks. Ultimately the plants are completely consumed and die. It happens every single time. Sometimes it takes a while for the fungus to take hold and other times it’s very quick. But it is inevitable. It’s never stopped me from getting a good crop of peas, but I do practise some strategies to slow down the effects:

• Good airflow helps to reduce such fungal infestations (hence trellising being a great strategy)

• Variety selection is important; some varieties are more resilient than others

• Seasonal conditions have a huge influence. You can grow snow peas at any time of the year in a warm temperate climate but the plants will die much more quickly during a humid summer than they will in a cool winter. So your succession planting needs to reflect that.

One problem that I experienced in my first few years of growing peas here in Kyneton was redlegged earth mites (Halotydeus destructor). They are a common pest of pastures and love hanging out in broadleaf weeds such as Capeweed. The redlegged earth mite made short work of my emerging pea seedlings and wiped out entire crops. I never had problems with these mites in suburbia and the problem only occurs when I grow the peas in the ground. The redlegged earth mite has never presented a problem for my pea crops growing in raised beds.

The following posts in the Vegetable Patch from Scratch series will give you more information on:

• Common pests of the vegetable patch

• Common diseases of the vegetable patch

• Common nutrient deficiencies of the vegetable patch

• Common problems of the vegetable patch

Myth-busting

In Norse mythology, peas are as a gift of the god Thor, so they should be eaten only on his name-day (Thursday). Personally, I’m happy to eat peas any day of the week.

One common gardening myth is that growing a legume crop such as peas or beans will replenish soil nitrogen levels for the next crop. Peas do have a symbiotic relationship with Rhizobium bacteria. However, nitrogen is a very mobile element and the small amount of extra nitrogen that has been added by the legumes will be quickly lost back into the atmosphere.

These root nodules contain bacteria that fix atmospheric nitrogen and turn them into nitrates, that plants can use. So yes, peas and beans can increase the amount of available nitrogen in the soil while the plants are growing and supporting their Rhizobium mates. But if the cells in the roots are no longer alive, then the Rhizobium will also quickly die. And that means that the nitrogen is no longer being converted to nitrates.

Adding compost is a far more reliable way to increase nitrogen levels in your garden soil. Growing legumes is still a useful thing to do – they break up your soil with their roots, they cover the soil surface as a living mulch, and they can be used as a green manure crop to add valuable organic matter – but don’t rely on them to add nitrogen.

The nitty gritty of growing peas: phenology, varieties and planting

Timing

This chart shows the best times to grow peas based on my experience of growing them in Melbourne (warm temperate) and Kyneton (cool temperate), both in south-eastern Australia. The timing is applicable for growers in the same climates across the southern hemisphere. Northern hemisphere folks will need to adjust the timing by six months.