Peas be with you

Round seeded peas are reasonably resistant to frost and in mild areas can be planted from October on to get an early crop the next year. However, if a sharp frost (lower than –6oC) hits in the spring, they will all turn black. Most recover but never give the sort of crop that they would have done protected in a cold frame, mini tunnel or a layer of agricultural fleece. These retain the heat constantly generated in the soil, mainly by bacteria. Main crops, the wrinkled-seeded varieties, are planted in the spring when the soil is right, not too cold or wet and successive sowings can be continued until July.

 

Peas are not only good for you but, as early farmers discovered, they are good for the soil too. Like beans, they are legumes that fix atmospheric nitrogen due to association between bacteria and plant roots. The plants supply the bacteria with the sugars they need for growth and, in return, the bacteria convert air in the soil to provide the nitrogen that the plant needs for growth; deal done. In your garden rotation, you plant peas after root and bulb crops and before potatoes or, as an old boy once told me, before sowing a lawn.

 

Wildlife like peas as well, a major problem. I planted a crop a few years ago and when I went on holiday, they were a couple of inches high, well protected and looking good. When I came back a week later, they were no more, slugs and snails. If you are blessed with blackbirds and/or, even worse, pigeons in the garden, they disappear at the same stage. Survival depends on how well you can keep them away. The traditional approach is the pea stick. Pea sticks are about the same length as the peas grow and can be obtained from any woodland or hedgerow. Take your secatures with you and clip off dead branches of about the right length, choosing the irregular ones. Put these down the middle of the rows between the seeds and they should confuse the birds. This doesn’t always work and many gardeners have to resort to additional deterrents: CD birdscarers seem to be popular.

 

Pea fly, which lays its eggs in the flowers, producing maggots in the peas used to be a problem but I haven’t seen it in the UK for years. Late sowings often come down with mildew: they turn white and the peas taste starchy.  If there is this sort of problem locally, it might be better to grow resistant varieties.  

 

As far as varieties go, my rule of thumb is Feltham First for autumn-planted crops and Kelvedon wonder for maincrops in a garden or allotment but, then, I am a bit traditional. There are plenty of varieties out there and a good idea is to ask neighbours what they sow. There are also varieties, Alderman is a good one, that grow as tall as runner beans and dwarf varieties like Little Marvel that need no support. 

 

 

Peas grow best on neutral soils but are quite tolerant. When I farmed on very acid soils, I limed but if there is enough decompositional material in an ordinary soil, you don’t need to add anything, especially not rich compost. If necessary, the exhausted contents of flowerpots and baskets could find a good use here, as could old rotted-down leaf mould. 

 

Peas, as far as I’m concerned, are best eaten raw. I called in to visit a friend one afternoon and he informed me that his father had phoned to tell him to pick the peas and put them in the freezer. Well, accompanied by a bottle of red, etc. we went out to harvest the crop. It was a low-growing variety broadcast in a 2x3m bed. We ate most during the next couple of hours and a small portion was frozen for Dad. One condition for eating peas raw is they must be eaten young, before they become starchy but they do dry well and have no sell-by date. They then go to make mushy peas or pease pudding and can replace other pulses in most recipes. They also freeze very well, as Mr Birdseye discovered.

 

Finally, it was studying the effects of crossing round and wrinkled varieties that Gregor Mendel discovered the laws of heredity, paving the way to the science of genetics.