Tips on how to grow peas
Sweet and tender peas are easy to grow in cooler climates, or over the cooler months in warmer places. Enjoy them in pasta, salads, risottos and stir-fries, as well as eating them straight from the pod! The general rule is to grow 10 plants per person – more if you want a surplus to freeze.
SOW AND GROW
When to sow: April to October in warm areas; September to April in cooler areas. Transplant: April to October in warm areas; September to April in cooler areas. Position: Full sun. Harvest: 10-12 weeks. Good for beginners.
GET STARTED
Peas prefer cooler weather and will stop producing if it gets too hot, so treat them as a shoulder season crop in warmer places and sow mid-autumn until midspring. In cooler regions, you can sow from the start of spring until the middle of autumn.
Birds, rats and mice also find peas delicious and can eat newly sown seed before it gets a chance to strike. But once pea seed has produced its first true leaves, the nutrition in the seed has been exhausted, so if newly planted seed disappears at your place, start peas in punnets or trays, and carefully transplant when the seedlings are about 5cm high.
STEP-BY-STEP
Sow all pea seed about 2.5cm deep. Space climbing peas 5-10cm apart next to a teepee, trellis or climbing frame. Dwarf peas can be spaced about 10cm apart in rows that are about 50cm apart. Dwarf varieties appreciate a bit of support too, so plant in blocks or use a stake to about 40-50cm. Germination can take from six days up to a fortnight in winter. Some gardeners like to pre-soak pea seeds for a few hours to hasten germination.
GROWING TIPS
Grow peas in the sunniest spot in your garden. Enrich the soil in advance with compost and sheep pellets. Work the soil well; if the emerging taproot cannot push down easily, it will force the seed up and out where a bird is likely to eat it.
Peas can be grown in large pots – just water them daily in warm weather. Either erect a tepee in the pot when sowing seeds or planting seedlings of climbing peas or grow dwarf varieties.
Pick regularly to encourage more flowers and pods. The lower pods ripen first. When picking, hold the plant with one hand and snap the stem above the calyx with the other so you don’t pull the plant off the trellis or out of the ground. Pick snow peas when the pods are tender, sugar snaps when the peas start to swell in the pods, and shelling peas when the pods are bright green and plump.
STANDOUT VARIETIES
Reliable climbing peas for shelling include 1.5m ‘Utrillo’ and ‘Giant Alderman’, which grows to 2m. Dwarf varieties include prolific ‘Greenfeast’, speedy ‘Petit Provencal’, which produces peas at around eight weeks, and ‘Princess’, which grows to 85cm and can cope with cooler climates.
Flat-podded snow peas are eaten pods and all.
‘Carouby’ is a climbing snow pea with good heat-tolerance and resistance to mildew; ‘Shiraz’ has purple and pink flowers and beautiful dark purple pods; and Indian heirloom ‘Golden Sweet’ is a tasty yellow variety. Or try tall (up to 180cm) ‘Goliath’ or 60cm-high ‘Kennedy Dwarf’.
Sugar snaps are like a cross between a shelling pea and a snow pea and can also be eaten pod and all.
TROUBLESHOOTING
Slugs and snails love peas, so protect plants with cloches while they get established. Birds can be problematic too, pecking away seeds, leaves, flowers and pods. Erect bird netting if you notice bird activity.
Avoid watering the leaves and don’t overcrowd plants to reduce fungal diseases like powdery mildew. Because they have more air flow around them, climbing peas tend to be less susceptible to fungal diseases than dwarf peas.