It’s easy-peasy... start sowing now to harvest the pods of this sweet-tasting veg in summer
The sweet flavour of fresh peas is one of the best tastes of summer and now is the time to start sowing them, either under cover or straight into the soil.
Peas dislike root disturbance, so the easiest way to get round that, if you are starting yours in a greenhouse, is to use a length of drainpipe, cut in half, and sow the peas into it. Then, when they are ready to go outdoors you only need to slide the whole contents of the pipe onto the seedbed and your peas will hardy notice they have been moved.
If sowing outside, cover the soil with cloches or fleece for a week or two beforehand, in order to warm up the soil, then dig a trench 5cm deep and 15cm wide, sowing peas at 7.5cm intervals.
Draw some soil over the top of the peas and water them, covering with fleece or cloches again if you want to give them a little protection.
Once the peas appear, mulch around them and sink a framework of twiggy sticks up and down the rows so the peas have something to cling to as they grow.
It takes about 14 weeks from sowing to picking.
If you want to grow a succession, choose different varieties that are specially bred to be sown at different times of the year.
Some people like to serve their peas with a few sprigs of mint and you might want to grow a variety of flavours, from sweet-tasting pineapple mint to fresh and sprightly spearmint.
One of the easiest ways to establish a clump of mint is to buy a pot of it from the herb stand in your local supermarket and then transplant the seedlings into a bigger pot with better compost. Mint doesn’t mind a bit of shade but it does need moist soil, so don’t let it dry out.
If you want to plant it out in the garden then sink the pot directly into the ground, that way it is less likely to mount a takeover bid.
You can grow on supermarket parsley in the same way, and basil too, but the latter needs a warm spot so keep it on the kitchen windowsill until mid-may at the earliest. Homegrown