today we're going to learn how to grow a
classic spring crop and that would be
peas chemistry here from epic gardening
where we're growing
greener thumbs let's go peas are a
quintessential
spring crop one of the easiest and most
tasty and pleasurable things that you
can grow
in spring so in today's video i'm going
to go through the major categories of
peas because there are a couple
different types that you want to
consider
some sewing and planting recommendations
of course some care and trellising
and at the end of the video i will show
you my favorite way to eat peas
spoiler alert it really doesn't have
anything to do with going in the kitchen
so cultivate that like button
and i will bless you with 55
more pea pods than you would have had
this season and let's get into the video
peas are one of the oldest cultivated
crops in the world and they're a staple
in many
areas of the world including here i mean
in north america we grow them
all the time they're fantastic i know a
lot of my british gardeners love to grow
peas
and they have their own unique methods
the thing that's nice about peas is that
they can tolerate
cold even light frost and they're okay
having what we call wet feet in the
garden which means that
they're okay if the soil is a little
overly moist that makes them perfect as
a spring crop because you're going to
get those cold temperatures and also
unless you live
here you're probably going to get a
decent amount of rain if you can manage
your temperatures and keep the temps
low in the summer by using shade or
planting in an area that's a little bit
cooler
you can actually grow peas all the way
through into fall until the winter kills
them off so you in theory
can grow them year round but at least
for me here in my warmer zone
i'm going to grow them right now in the
beginning of spring and i'm also going
to restart them again
in late fall so i can get a winter crop
the thing you want to know
before you even start growing and
planting your peas which we'll get to in
a second is
what type of pea should you grow the
three major types of peas are shelling
peas
snap peas and snow peas then you also
have sweet peas which are typically
grown for the flowers you don't want to
eat those and you have tendril peas
which you're gonna grow for these
tendrils and shoots and you're not
really consuming them for the pea pod
let's talk about those three main
categories though first you've got your
snow peas your snow peas
you're going to eat the whole pod when
the seeds inside those pea seeds are
immature they're underdeveloped and the
seed pot itself is translucent so you
just pull one off
and pop it in your mouth very delicious
next you have your shelling peas
sometimes called english peas the pods
on these are a lot more fibrous they'll
have a string in them
and typically what you do is take the
shell off hence the name shelling
and you consume the peas after that just
eating the peas themselves
then you've got your snap peas they're a
cross of shelling
and snow which means you get the best of
both worlds you can eat the whole pod
but you also have that nice sweetness in
the pea itself
finally as far as varieties go there are
a lot of different types you can get a
dwarf or bushing style pea like the
desiree dwarf blouse chakra p
a classic and a favorite of mine or you
can get more classic ones that will run
all the way up like a six to seven foot
tall structure
i'll leave a few varieties in the upper
corner as we talk throughout this video
that you can try out
but now let's get into how to actually
sew and start your pcs
so here i have some little snow pea
white peas
of course they're a snow pea 30 day crop
40 inches tall
and i know we've probably all seen peas
before but i figured i would just show
you
really quickly what they look like these
are the dried out pea seeds
a lot of people will say you should soak
these to improve germination
it can definitely speed it up and you
don't have to do it that's the thing to
remember you don't have to do it so if
you're
going to transplant what you'll want to
do is just pop a little hole in here
these are the epic 6l trays here so pop
i usually put two
in about an inch or so down there you go
and cover it up and you're good to go
you just have to wait water it in
same sort of seed starting process as
normal so if you do opt to start your
seeds indoors for
spacing or timing reasons then you just
pop them out and transplant them in
and you're totally good to go but if
you're like many gardeners including
myself
you may just want to make your life a
little bit easier take your pea seeds
and then just direct sow them
in the bed that's what we did right here
on this little trellis
and as far as spacing goes you actually
can be quite aggressive with this
you can put i mean i think we put
somewhere around 40
just right here so you can plant them
anywhere from one to three inches apart
you could plant them right next to each
other you could have more than one pea
plant
coming out of the same hole as long as
you don't go absolutely overkill they're
quite forgiving
because you got to think about it
they're actually putting a lot of their
growth
upwards and the roots are relatively
shallow and don't seem to mind competing
with one another
too too much so general rule of thumb
you can direct sow an inch deep
cover them up make sure they're watered
in you've got a nice seed hole to soak
through
and after that you'll start to see them
come up and at this point
you really want to make sure the
watering is on point because they're a
shallow rooted plant
they're not going to do really well with
like a very heavy clay soil
and they're not going to do really well
if you let them dry out especially early
on you'll get like
yellowing down there it just seems to be
a bit of an issue
another thing i've noticed is if you
transplant you can have a little bit
more of an issue
with the roots making themselves at home
and really getting a lot of nitrogen out
of that soil early on
that's another reason why i usually
prefer to direct sow my peas
one final planting method you really
might enjoy if you're looking to plant a
big old
line of peas is to put them in a rain
gutter so
fill the rain gutter up with some soil
sow your peas in a trench in that and
then once they sprout you can just
furrow and drop it directly into that
furrow i've seen this happen
typically with the british gardeners i
don't know maybe it's got popular over
in
in the uk for a while but i know hugh
richards over at hughes nursery does
this
it's a really cool method and it's
highly efficient as far as time so you
don't have to prick them all out
and plop them in although you of course
could direct so now as far as care goes
we already talked about watering it's
shallow rooted you want to make sure you
keep that in mind but you also want to
give this maybe
six ish plus hours of sun a day as long
as the temperatures stay relatively cool
remember it's a quintessential spring
fall crop
so if the temperatures get too too hot i
would say above
maybe 80 degrees fahrenheit we'll put
celsius up here as well
then the pea production will start to
terminate so the flowers
won't form or won't form as well and the
pods won't form or won't form as well so
you do want to keep those temperatures a
little bit lower if you can
fertility wise i've never really
fertilized my peas remember they're a
legume they're a nitrogen-fixing crop so
at some point in their growth they're
going to start producing their own
nitrogen
the one thing that i will say and a lot
of people recommend
i've done it and i've also not done this
and my results have been
more or less the same and that would be
using a bacterial inoculant when you're
transplanting or
in your pea soil the reason why is
because
they're only nitrogen fixing if the
bacteria that partner up with the
nodules on the roots
are actually present and so the logic
there is if you inoculate with that
bacteria
then those rhizobacteria which is what
they're called will actually start to be
present and start fixing the nitrogen at
a faster rate
i really don't know because like i said
i've done it both ways and my pees have
been fine
both ways so maybe my soil already has a
lot of rhizobacteria in it
or maybe the inoculant is doing
something and i just haven't been able
to really
measure that but it is something to
consider one of the most important parts
of growing pea successfully is providing
them some sort of structure upon which
they can climb so
i have this honestly a little weird
looking because there's kale growing
through it right now i'm gonna harvest
the kale out pretty soon
this is just a bamboo trellis so the
bamboo steaks cost maybe five dollars
for a pack of 10 or 15 at the local
nursery
that's relatively inexpensive and then
up top it's just some twine
the reason why this works is because
peas have a tendril that'll go out
and as soon as it hits something solid
it starts to wrap around it
and that's how it supports itself as it
climbs upwards
so as long as you're giving it something
it can do that to
the trellising method doesn't really
matter but i'll show you three really
quick ones here so of course you have
this one here the bamboo twine one
you're just using some lashing up top
and i've covered that in a couple
different videos before if you want to
see a full
video though let me know i will make it
for you but let's take a look at another
simple one
so this trellis here is actually the
back side of one that i showed you guys
earlier in the video
this is just a broken piece of a
gardener's vertex tomato cage
i accidentally broke it i decided i
could stab it into the ground flat
then we have a lot of wind coming
through in this direction
coming in this way and so we stuck some
bamboo stakes in here
just as a backstop so that this doesn't
blow like crazy against the wind so
for a while it was actually pulling all
the way back and it wasn't really great
so this is just a fantastic way to slot
in peas
on the edge of a bed and this is on the
north side of the bed
so that it's not shading anything out
finally we have more of an obelisk style
trellis here this one is coming out of a
company called terra sculpture i'll put
it in the description but
as you can see the peas eventually make
their way up the tendrils are attaching
to this little wire right here
and they're staying with the structure
otherwise they would just be flopping
all these tendrils would be getting
attached to each other and getting all
tangled
and the production has been really
really great and it kind of makes this
nice
natural look as it covers the trellis in
green when you're growing peas you may
run into some pest and disease issues i
wouldn't say they're
really super disease or pest prone on a
disease perspective you might get
powdery mildew
you might get fusarium wilt or you might
get mosaic virus i'd say powdery mildew
is probably your most common
that's the most common in general it
seems like it's hard to avoid i mean
keep the conditions relatively cool make
sure there's good air flow
make sure that you're not watering over
the top of your peas and you should be
fine as far as pests go you're probably
going to get a little bit of aphid
pressure if anything else
i haven't seen a whole lot in my pea
crops either at this garden or gardens
in the past
you can blast them off in the beginning
of the day with some cold water that
tends to do the trick
i really haven't seen a whole lot of
pest issues though so you've gotten
through
the beginning of your pea's life you've
avoided some pests and disease
how do you know when it's time to
harvest your peas it really depends on
the variety so thinking back to the
beginning of the video
if you have those snow peas that's going
to be your earliest harvest because
you're harvesting them
at the immature pod stage somewhere
around 40 to 50 days or so
if you're harvesting a shelling pea it's
going to be 60
70 days and you're going to want to make
sure that it's nice and plump it's ready
to go
they're fully formed my personal
favorite pea though is a snap piece so
let's go out into the front yard i'll
show you how
i like to eat my peas so we're back out
in the front yard
these are the peas that i like to eat
this is the phase that i like to eat
them at what i like to do
instead of just ripping it off like this
where you can pull the entire
plant and potentially rip a stem or
damage it just hold here
and pull here then you're in a good spot
i accidentally missed the little flower
there but it doesn't really matter
because
the way i eat this pea is quite simple i
like to pop it open like this
and look at that that's the exact
phase that i like to eat them they're
not all the way fully formed
but they're not super young so it's
right at this phase
so let's do one more right here just
because there you go
i want to show you that perfect
pea phase the sweetness on this i swear
guys it is
unreal unreal so there you go looks like
we had a
oops i lost one we had a mishap right
there we lost this one we lost that one
but whatever
these are still good so let's go ahead
and taste test actually there you go
i finally got a nice looking one look at
those bad boys
so here we have a couple of these peas
let's give them a little taste test
it's so sweet i'll tell you what you eat
them like this
there's almost no point in bringing them
indoors there's really no point
look at this just pop them in they're so
good
sweetness is insane and they're so
prolific that you can come out every
single time it's like a good incentive
to come out in the garden
and do a lot of your garden chores
because you just pop some peas in your
mouth and you're good to go
if you do want to see a little bit more
on actually preparing food
inside the home check out my second
channel epic homesteading where i go
into a lot of the more homesteady type
of stuff
energy systems recipes we're getting
chickens soon all that kind of stuff is
over on epic homesteading but i hope
this was a good informative guide on
growing peas it's a really fun crop
really easy for a beginner gardener
tons of different varieties so i highly
recommend you give it a shot
and until next time good luck in the
garden and keep on growing