Be at peas
Within two months, gardeners in northwest Arkansas will be able to plant snow peas or sugar snap peas or maybe both, and if you don’t know the difference, it doesn’t matter.
Is there a difference? Yes, but peas have long since moved beyond differences and stand united as members of Pisum sativa, aka peadom. There are three peas to discuss.
Garden peas, which I’ve always known as English peas, have inedible pods but are grown for the tasty peas in the pod. Alaska is a common variety. Snow peas are simply a variety of P. sativa with an edible pod. They’re tasty. The British term for them is mangetout which means “eat all.” These varieties are climbers that need a trellis, a tepee or support of some kind. They have identical soil requirements and, as you would expect, similar nutritional contributions.
But wait… there’s more! Two varieties is never enough for seed scientists, and here is what happened. Pay attention because this will be on the test. Pea scientists in lab coats decided to send an English pea and a snow pea on a honeymoon. Soon enough, the sugar snap pea – shiny, green and cute – was born. “Look what we did!” the pea scientists proclaimed, and evidence of their good work is available wherever their grandkids’ neighbors buy seeds. I have a couple packets plus seeds I have saved.
Snow pea varieties, just so you know, have flat pods with only a tiny bump where seeds are forming. Pick them before the bump bumps much. Let sugar snaps mature until the peas bump out a bit. They don’t last long once harvested, so somebody will have to freeze some of your two-bags-full bumper crop.
English, snow, and sugar snap peas prefer cooler weather, so they can be planted in March, depending on weather, in well-prepared soil and again mid-August once the weather moderates. I once planted (too?) early and a frost knocked down my healthy snow pea seedlings. Darn. So, I replanted and there was another late frost so there went another batch. Another darn. What that version of me had not learned yet (or failed to accomplish) was simply protecting tender seedlings from a cold snap.
Cold is cold and it can’t be denied, but it can be deflected. Pile plenty of plant matter around the young plants and station something above and around to deflect the cold from them. Find a way to shelter your tiny new neighbors – give them a tent, a tepee, a chance – because you planted them and you get to be a four-year old constructing the encasement held together with twist-ties that will save them.
“But where do I find the best location for a new pea row?” the young gardener asked the clouds in the sky. The answer was, “Go the garden, stand there for a minute, look around, then wander with no purpose. The right spot will call out. Pay attention.”
In my garden map, the bed that called out to me is the rectangle at the corner of Occidental Road and Highway One. It’s beside the blackberries.
It’s easy to envision installing a trellis for two or three varieties of edible pod peas and planting radishes as a companion once a month on the sunny side of a row. So, it’s time to get it ready. P. sativa prefers soil in the pH range of 6.0 – 7.5. That means moving away from acidic soils, such as the soil on my rocky hillside. Adding dolomite to your pea bed provides calcium and magnesium plus magic mojo like Brother Bobo, and that’s a good thing. We need more Bobo in our gardens. A dose of woodstove ashes would also be useful for increasing the pH of your soil, plus compost adds beaucoup minerals such as this and that and those over there.
Peas offer us vitamins and minerals and they’re crunchy. All I am saying is give peas a chance.