I not only soak, but presprout. That way I only plant the seeds that have sprouted well into the peat or paper pots. I soak overnight and then pour the seed into a strainer and then off into a pie plate with a cover. I do this in the kitchen. Then as soon as I have sprouts, I carefully transfer the seeds into the cups and throw away the duds.

Is everyone beginning that phrase you see on seed packs that says, "as soon as the ground can be worked in Spring"?

Is everyone beginning to understand that phrase you see on seed packs that says, 'as soon as the ground can be worked in Spring"?

Carol, that phrase may work if you wait til SPRING. I worked soil and planted broccoli a week or two ago. I should have eaten it before I planted it, its just a dream now.

Larry

I bought following peas today from Lowes' and Walmart

1. Little Marvel
2. Wando
3. Super Snappy
4. Super Suger Snap
5. Alaska
6. Green Arrow
7. Mammoth Meting Suger
8. Oregon Gaint

I am going to soak over night and sow them in small pot tomorrow morning. Any suggestions?

-Chandra

Chandra, Yes. Think about it!

They grow fast. They are going to take up a lot of space, and that is a lot of peas. You have several different sizes there and some are going to require a real trellis.

In two weeks they will be big enough to go in the ground. I'm not sure what the zone is in Norman, but here in 6b I will wait another two weeks before I start mine.

I only raise Super Sugar Snaps and Sugar Snaps so those are the ones I know about.

My suggestion is that you slow down, wait and don't start them yet, just as Carol and Dorothy suggest.

The OSU-recommended planting dates for peas are Feb. 15th through March 10th, with the Feb. 15th being for far southern OK and the March 10th date for far nothern OK, and with all the dates in between for those who live in the middle of the state. These are the recommended dates that you put peas (not the plants, just the pea seeds) into the ground. These dates are predicated on the knowledge that peas planted in, let's say, 40 degree soil in February or early March, will take up to 4 weeks (or even a little a longer) to sprout. That means if someone like me in southern OK sows peas in the ground on Feb. 15th, I'll likely have my peas sprouted and growing around March 15th. This is a very important thing to understand because by mid-March the air temperatures are presumably warmer and the sprouted pea seedlings can tolerate those temperatures. Pea seedlings sprouted too early indoors and transplanted outside earlier than direct-sown seeds could sprout cannot tolerate those temperatures.

You mess up the whole equation if you start your seeds indoors too early. Peas started inside in warmer soil and warmer air temperatures will sprout in maybe a week. So, if you start the seed tomorrow and it sprouts in a week, your plants will "need" to go into the ground (because they are getting too big) by about February 20th. Unfortunately, both the soil and air temperatures are likely to be too cold for them at that point. So, pea seedlings started prematurely indoors and transplanted outside when they are the right size for transplanting will be up and growing about 3 weeks "early". In the case of peas, being up and out in the cold early is bad, not good. Peas grown in cold soils are very vulnerable to certain diseases.

If or when I choose to start seed inside that is normally sown outside directly in the soil, I slide my dates later and not earlier to make up for the fact that my indoor seed will sprout faster and also grow faster once sprouted.

So, even though I can plant pea seed in the ground here around Feb. 15th, I won't start it inside until at least a week after that date. Let's say I start the seeds on Feb. 22nd and they sprout in 8 or 9 days. That puts my tiny sprouts up and growing by the first week in March around the 3rd or 4th. With luck, and if I grow them on in cool conditions so they don't grow too fast, I won't have to put them in the ground until about mid-March. Had I sown seed in mid-Feb., they'd likely be up about mid-March. So, I am matching my transplant date for the young pea plants to what the sprouting date likely would have been if direct-sown outside on the first day recommended by OSU for my part of the state.

Last year I had my peas transplanted into the ground in mid-March, and a week later, we had over an inch of sleet and snow. I mulched the pea plants and covered them with clear plastic for a week to try to keep them warmer and it worked because only a couple of them died. It was cold enough here that I was afraid they wouldn't survive. Had the plants been much taller, they likely wouldn't have survived. Remember that very tiny, short, young pea plants tolerate cold temperatures fairly well, but older, taller and larger plants do not. When planting peas, going with a late-ish planting date and smaller plants is a wiser choice that going early-ish and trying to transplant out bigger plants.

I don't know if anything we've said will stop you from planting your peas tomorrow, but we've tried. Planting too early almost never pays off because you're trying to beat the system, and you can't beat Mother Nature.

Dawn

Thank you so much, Carol, Dorothy and Dawn. I agree with you, will wait till Feb 20 or later. I keep looking GW for starters. Thank god I asked you all at the right time, else would have wasted time and seeds. Regards -Chandra

Chandra, Isn't it awful to have so many mothers?

If you plant too early you just create more work for yourself because bigger plants are just harder to handle. In addition, peas have a mind of their own, and at a very young age they will start to reach out and grab their neighbor and tightly wrap little tendrils around neighboring plants. When that starts to happen you can't have them touching so you would probably plant them outside to avoid the problem. Now you have a growing vine that will soon start blooming. If it gets cold during the blooming time, your vines will probably be damaged. If you plant them on time, and they are only a few inches tall, then the snow probably will not bother them. At least that has been my experience.

I will be planting three kinds of edible pod peas because those are the ones we like best. I have several of the others that you bought and may plant one of them but probably not all. My husband got carried away buying seeds on a shopping trip last year, and had to have one of every kind. I don't have room for all of them. It appears to me that Chandra and my DH may share the same shopping habits. LOL

Chandra,

Never fear! If we think you're doing something too early, we'll do everything we can to stop you. Do not think for one minute that all of us older/more experienced gardeners aren't dying to start seeds right this very minute, because we are. However, experience has taught us that Mother Nature bats last and she wins, so we've learned not to take any unnecessary risks because they rarely, if ever, pay off.

With the winter and spring weather being so erratic here and swinging wildly from "too cold" to "too hot", late winter and early spring plantings are difficult to time, at best, and during the worst weather years, almost impossible to time correctly. When we urge caution, it is from having the weather break our little gardening hearts by freezing back or killing our plants too many times.

Although we all think that gardening is great for stress-relief (and it is!), the truth is that it can add way more stress to your life if you plant too early and then have to watch and worry excessively about plants freezing on cold night after cold night. Life is stressful enough, so why plant early and invite more stress into our lives?

Carol, My experience with peas is the same as yours. Smaller and more immature plants tolerate a lot of cold but large ones don't. There's nothing more frustrating than having the peas growing well and blooming and then having a frost knock the blooms right off the plants and kill back a few inches at the top of the plants.

In the early 2000s when we kept having warm winters that they kept referring to as "the warmest winter ever", I gave up on planting cool season crops for a few years because the warm winters gave way to warm spring weather too early and my peas and other cool-season crops would bolt every time. Now that we're having colder winter weather again, I am having more luck with cool-season crops, but that doesn't mean I like the colder weather or anything, merely that I know we need to have some of it.

I think we all have the same garden shopping habits, and if someone doesn't want to buy and plant everything when they first find this forum, they eventually cross over to the "planting more is better" dark side after they've been around us a while!

Dawn

I don't think I mentioned--on this thread anyway--that I make two plantings of peas two-three weeks apart. If I didn't I would have more peas at one time than I would want to process. Because the latter ones catch up to the earlier they still don't come off at 3 weeks apart at harvest, but it still spreads it out a bit.

mulberryknob,
I'm glad you've given us all this detail. I've never (intentionally) presprouted my peas. But now that you brought it up I did it accidentally one year and that was my best year ever. I'm going to borrow from you and presprout, although I don't think I'll be potting up into cups. I presprout a lot of other things and like it, so it just makes sense to do peas too. Thanks!

Seedmama

Carol, not at all, indeed I feel lucky to many mothers! I don't know how I become seed addict. Today I had been to HD, I picked few more seed packets unintentionally. I don't know what I am going to do?

Dawn, thank you for all those details, your posts always flows with tons of notable information.

Dorothy, that's very nice idea, I would like try multi-date planting, even one fails other would match or if lucky gets double bumper crops!!!

What about winter sowing them in containers to put outside. Wouldn't they just wait until conditions are appropriate to sprout? Which is one of the purposes of winter sowing. I may try a few in soda bottles, like 1 or 2 to a bottle. They are already hardened off that way, too, so you don't have to go thru the process of putting them out for longer periods of time each day and bringing them in at night, until they have adapted to growing outside, and those fluctuating temps between outside and inside might not be too good for peas anyway. I think I just direct sowed them last year.

If I do just a few this way, I won't feel bad if I lose them either since I only plan to have about 4 vines.

I only have 2 varieties, and am thinking about not even planting the Sugar Sprints and just planting the Super Sugar Snap. A lot of things I've read suggest that the dwarf varieties are good for people with limited space, but it seems more logical to me that growing the pole type is more space saving because I'll be utilizing vertical space rather than covering more ground, or having more containers than what the vines will take up in ground or container space, e.g., 4 big pots versus 10 or more.

Susan

Susan, you can try, but as Kip said, "Sugar Snap Peas will grow in cold soil, but they don't germinate well in cold soil." That's why I stopped direct planting. Too much of the seed was rotting.

I raised Sugar Sprint last year because I didn't get the SSS early enough. Sprint was my first planting and it did ok. Was early and came back out of being covered almost completely when that 6" of snow fell the first day of spring. But I would rather have the tall peas for the reasons you said. More production for the ground space used.

My thought was to put the containers in the sun on my driveway or sidewalk just until they germinate. Do you think that would work? The sun would warm the concrete on the sidewalks sufficiently for the seed to germinate, right? Then, I could put them in a less sunny, warm area to grow awhile in the containers before planting them out.

Susan

Susan, If you are doing that, you might consider a larger container, then plant the entire pot contents in the ground without disturbing the root ball because those peas will start clinging together at a very early age. I would suggest no more than a half dozen peas in the container.

Good idea, Carol, and thanks!

Susan

Our peas in outdoor beds seems to be doing ok. I have two batch at interval two weeks growing in beds. First two batches where started indoor in aluminum trays. Third batch is about germinate in the paper cups indoor. I will move paper cups to greenhouse tomorrow. Only time will tell which batch will do good. Here are pics of the peas growing in outdoor beds;

-Chandra

Nice! I started mine inside in potting soil, under the lights and I am regretting that decision. I am wishing I used coconut coir like all the others. They are not germinating as fast as I had hoped. As a matter of fact, my tomatoes germinated faster!

Me thinks me is starting over soon... LOL

Chandra, Your early peas look great. Just be sure to cover them anytime you forecast low is about 22-25 degrees, especially once they start to bloom.

Ezzirah, Sometimes peas are just slow to sprout. I haven't even gotten out the heat mat because they sprouted without it, but one way to encourage the ones you've planted to go ahead and sprout would be to put them on top of the refrigerator or freezer if the top exterior of your freezer or refrigerator seems even the slightest bit warm when you touch it with your hand (my deep freeze does, my refrigerator doesn't). You can keep the plants under the lights all day, then put them on top of the freezer at night, for example. I set the flat of pepper seeds on top of the deep freeze and left it there for 3 days and by the third day all the seeds were emerging and I moved the flat to the light shelf. I've done the same thing with peas sometimes. I've also sped the pea seeds up if they were refusing to sprout some years by putting them outside on warm pavement during a warm, sunny day. However, to avoid sunburning young plants, you cannot just put them outside if half are up and half are not because the half that have emerged inside cannot go instantly from lower-intensity indoor lighting to brighter outside lighting. That's one reason to start them in indiidual peat pots or paper cups---so you can separate the early sprouters from the late sprouters and move the late seeds that haven't sprouted to a warm, outdoor location while the already-sprouting ones are inside under lights. This year I moved all of them outside the minute one tiny bit of green appeared from the soil, so I wouldn't have to deal with the whole hardening-off process.

Dawn

I've had very good luck sprouting peas using the moist paper towel method. I have a cabinet above the microwave and oven that stays a few degrees warmer than the rest of the house, and whenever I've germinated peas up there they all germinate within two days. I just direct sowed the sprouted peas into the garden yesterday rather than raising them inside.

Ezzirah,

It could be that your seed is a little old. Pea seed usually remains viable for at least three years, but each year that it 'ages' it will germinate a little more slowly than the year before.

When I sow fresh seed that I soaked in water for a couple of hours before sowing, it usually pops up out of the soil within a day of being planted. Older seed takes longer. Really old seed can take a really long time.

Dawn

Your peas look great, Chandra. You are ahead of me this year. Mine are just up about an inch. They germinated really quickly. I soaked them overnight on the 14th and put them into the tp tubes on the 17th. They were up and growing by the 19th.

I started a couple hundred Sugar Snap, Alaska and snowpeas pea pots (cardboard tubes and newspaper cups in rubbermaid storage bins, two seeds per pot) on the 19th after an overnight soak. Bins went into black plastic trash bags, on the kitchen table. Roots started growing on the 2nd day, and I'll likely move them to the backporch visqueen plant "room" where I've overwintered my tropicals and houseplants. I hope to have them in the ground the first weekend in March, possibly the 2nd. I work in town, so weekends are my only gardening days until the time changes again.

Dawn - Man, this is early alaska seed I bought at Horn seed this year! Some have popped up and some have not yet. I didn't know that as soon as they are starting to poke up you can set them out to avoid hardening off. That is good to know I hate the whole hardening off process. I never seem to get it right!

Hardening off is not as difficult as it seems.

Write yourself a schedule and post it on your fridge so you won't forget to do it.

My schedule will vary depending on what the danged old Oklahoma wind is doing, but I generally like to put flats of plants on the sunporch out of direct sunlight for the first week. On the sunporch, I can open or close windows to control how much wind they're getting too. Then, I move them outside into direct sunlight/stronger wind although I still try to place them on whichever side of a building will shelter them from strong wind on really windy days. Before we built the screened-in porch that eventually became the glassed-in sunporch, I just put them on the front porch or back porch depending on the time of day it was.

On the first day, give your young seedlings only one hour of direct sunlight. On the second day, make it two hours. On the third day, three hours, etc. If, on any given day they seem like they are getting sunburn or windburn, immediately move them inside out of direct light and direct wind and give them one day inside to recover a bit.

It is a little harder to do this if you work a standard 8 am to 5 pm day because you are not at home to carry the plants back inside. Back when I worked, I would start hardening off the plants on a Wed. or Thurs. in springtime, putting out the plants for an hour on Wed or Thurs or Friday as soon as I got home from work. If I gave them one hour outdoors on Wed., I tried to give them two hours on Thursday, and three hours on Friday....even if that three hours was from 5 to 8 p.m. and the sun was already sinking low in the sky. Then, on Saturday, I'd give then 4 or 5 hours, and 5 or 6 hours on Sunday, and would leave them outside all day on Monday. It is a little riskier when you have to leave them out while you're at work, but it does help you get them hardened off. Back then, I worked about 20 minutes from where we lived, so sometimes I would put them out in the morning, then run home at lunch time and move them back inside, and then run back to work. It was kind of hectic, but a gardener does what has to be done to get the plants hardened off properly.

If you are having a hard time managing the hardening off process because of the high winds, you can prepare the plants by giving them an hour or two or three of wind from a box fan or oscillating fan inside in the evenings. I keep a ceiling fan on in the room with my light shelf 24/7 and add a box fan or oscillating fan in the week or two before I start moving them outside to harden off. Using a fan with the seedlings you're raising indoors actually gives you stronger plants. Tomato plants, for example, form much thicker, stronger main stems when they have regular wind exposure.

Once you have a cold frame, you can leave plants in it to harden them off too, as long as you're able to ensure the lid will stay open so they don't roast on a hot day. One reason we built the greenhouse was so I could harden off plants in it. I always have trouble in late winter/early spring because of my involvement with our local VFD. When the fire pagers go off, you have to respond right then. You can't carry 15 flats of plants back into the house before you leave, so some years, I've left for what I thought would be a minor fire and it turned out to be a major one and I've come home hours later (sometimes 10 or 12 hours later!) to plants that were sunburned, windburned, dried out and, sometimes, dead. I hope that with the greenhouse, I can leave the plants to go to a fire and not have to worry the wind will beat them to death while I'm gone. Time will tell, won't it?

You also could make a low tunnel like the one Chandra has built in his backyard, using PVC pipe or electrical conduit and a floating row material. It will filter both wind and sunlight to a certain degree (the amount varies with the weight of the row cover material you buy) and that could help you harden off seedlings in a more sheltered location .

Alaska peas are shelling peas, right? I don't grow shelling peas because you get so little edible material from them compared to what you get with sugar snap peas, but you grow them the same way you grow sugar snap peas. Back when I grew shelling peas, I planted them at the same time and in the same manner as sugar snaps and they grew about the same. They just didn't produce enough for me to continue devoting space to them.

Dawn

Dawn,

Thanks for hint! I not thought about harden off seedlings under low tunnels.

Indeed temp inside the tunnels bit warmer than outside, and secondly soil temp is also 5degree higher than outside. Yesterday's soil temp inside the tunnel was 52degree as compared to outside bed which was 48 degree.

My tomatoes and other cool season seedling are growing in greenhouse, do they need to harden off as well before planting them to beds?

-Chandra

Chandra, If the tomatoes and cool-season seedlings are growing in the greenhouse without shadecloth, then I think the only hardening off they would need would be to the wind because they're already used to the light. If you have open vents or open doors and they are getting really strong airflow in the greenhouse, they might not even need to be hardened off to the wind either. If they are under some form of shadecloth, they will need some hardening off but it probably could be accomplished in 3 or 4 days instead of the usual week or longer. Growing tomato plants in a greenhouse under shadecloth is like growing them in partial shade, so they need at least a little hardening-off to prepare them for full sun.

I am always really careful about hardening off plants because if I fail to do it properly, I could lose all my plants, and I don't want for that to happen.

Sometimes, if it is a rainy year and we are cloudy every single day, you can get away with moving plants outdoors without hardening them off, but even in periods of heavy rainfall we often have days of bright sunlight that can burn plants that aren't used to it.

I am going to transplant my tomato plants into the ground somewhere around 2-3 weeks before my average last frost date, which is March 28th, and will cover the entire bed with a low tunnel covered with floating row cover material. The row cover will keep them slightly warmer and will allow them to grow and become well-established in somewhat sheltered conditions. (March wind can be brutal to young vegetative growth.) Instead of just suddenly removing the row cover once we're past the average last frost date, I'll probably take it off for a couple of hours the first day, then a half day the second time, etc. to see how they do without it. I'll leave the hoops up though so I can throw bird or deer netting over the rows of plants if hail threatens. That will work until the plants outgrow the height of the hoops. At that point I'll probably take down the hoops and move them into the garage for storage.

Our weather is so changeable and causes so many gardening problems that I think it pays off to be cautious with our plants. It doesn't always pay off, though. One year I kept postponing transplanting my tomato plants into the ground because the possibility of hail was in the forecast. I waited and waited and waited for the right day. Finally we had a forecast that did not include thunderstorms or hail. I spend the whole day transplanting tomato plants into the ground. About an hour after I finished, it started looking dark to our southwest....and about an hour after that, it was raining and hailing. That's the last time I postponed planting because of hail being in the forecast. I figure if it is going to happen, it is going to happen, no matter what I do.

Dawn

Wow Dawn, I should have knew about the bird or deer netting over the rows of plants for hail projection...i might have saved some plants last storm. Okey, bird net in my list now! I can pullover on the cattle panel and tie to each side of the raised beds get some protection from hails. Thanks -Chandra

Chandra,

Bird or deer netting work if the hail is large enough that it doesn't fit through the holes. It won't work with really small hail, but hail which is that small won't damage much anyway. With really large hail---roughly golfball or walnut-sized or larger, it may tear through the netting depending on the strength of the netting.

The problem with hail is that you don't always have advance warning, but if you watch the NWS forecasts and warnings closely, sometimes you have great advance warning. There have been times I've seen the sky turn that gray-green color and have run out to the garden and thrown coverings over my plants with just seconds or minutes to spare.

I've been through several severe storms in Texas that had baseball-sized hail, including one when I was 18 years old that destroyed my umbrella (lol, did I really think the umbrella would withstand baseball-sized hail?) and broke my car windshield, and one a year later that put baseball-sized holes in my parents house--knocking out all the windows, demolishing the roof and leaving holes in the exterior and interior walls that you could put your fist through. The worst one I've been through here had hailstones about the size of eggs. I just dread hail more than anything because, as you learned yourself last year, hailstones do an incredible amount of damage. Luckily for us, plants are very resilient and can bounce back more quickly than we tend to think they will.

Dawn

What are the steps, measures and care to be taken to make my super sugar snap peas tellies looks like;

This picture is from the Osborne Seed Co variety trials for the Super Sugar Snap. I am very impressed with its growth and production... I never see such plants in my garden. What is their secret?

-Chandra

Who knows what Osborne Seed does to have such picture-perfect plants? Mine do actually look pretty much like that in May in a good, cool, rainy spring. To get lush vines full of peas you need to keep the plants watered well and be careful not to give them too much nitrogen or you'll get all leaves and not many peas. Peas grown in soil with a heavy clay content produce more peas per plant than those in very sandy soil, but the ones in sandy soil produce earlier.

Check your soil pH, Chandra. It should be between 6.5 and 7.5 for best production. I am pretty sure you already do use a Bean and Pea Inoculate. I do and I think it makes a difference in productivity.

I don't know what else to suggest, other than to say that it is important you regularly harvest and don't let any snap peas become overly large and mature or it can shut down production. Remember that the "purpose" of a plant's flower and fruit formation is to create seed in order to perpetute the species. So, if the plants "knows" it has very mature seed on the plant, it often will stop producing more.

Dawn

Ah, great stuff. AND I just sprouted peas a few days ago. Despite being too early I did exactly what Dawn suggested - as soon as they were up I moved them outside (on the porch).

More often than not I'm finding to just "take it". If they die, they die. If they don't produce, they don't produce (like my brocs planted this week or my leggy cauliflower that will probably "button").

Dawn, as many tomato plants you carry I bet you were truly sweating it that season.

You ladies are so correct, I've been trying to beat the system. I guess I'll focus on the compost pile and amending soil until the time is right. I'll plug those peas in when they become unmanageable and just let it happen. lol

Bon,

May I suggest you put those pea babies in the ground? It is time, it is time, it is time. Some cold years I've held them out of the ground later than this, but only because it was either very cold or very wet. I put my second planting of peas in the ground this week. Unless you have poorly-draining clay (and I do, but mine are in a raised bed with well-amended clay), it it unlikely the weather can do much to hurt the peas now. They generally won't suffer freeze damage unless temps drop below the mid-20s, and if they are small even that won't bother them. Once they are blooming, those temps will knock the blooms off. It is warm enough now that only flash flooding or hail should be a threat to them, weatherwise.

If you wait too late to put them in the ground, they won't get big enough to make peas. Once the daily highs begin regularly exceeding about 85-90 degrees, the pea plants' days are numbered. For me, that can come as early as mid- to late-May or sometimes not until sometime in June. Pea plants generally start to flower 40-50 days after they emerge from the soil, so the longer you hold them without planting them, them more you're hurting their productive potential. Some years I haven't planted them until early April, and had a decent harvest, but have a better harvest overall from an earlier planting. I generally get a huge snap pea harvest when spring is early merely because they have that many more weeks to produce before the high heat gets them. I wish they would produce all summer here, but they won't.

Everything weatherwise that can happen to my tomato plants has happened at one time or another---including torrential rainfall one August or September from the remains of a tropical storm or hurricane. One year in Texas we got hit by baseball-sized hail. Not much was left of the garden. Either the plants make it or they don't. I've never had a year in which we haven't made a decent tomato crop (other than the baseball-sized hail year), but there's definitely been some drought periods when the yield was not nearly as high as usual. I get aggravated with the weather if I don't get enough tomatoes to can 50-100 jars of salsa, and to make freezer sauce and several gallons of dehydrated tomatoes, but I still am happy as long as we have plenty of tomatoes for fresh eating. As hard as a drought year is on us, we still get enough tomatoes for us. It is much harder on friends of ours to whom we routinely give "extra" tomatoes, because in a drought year there aren't many extras.

We have several friends and neighbors who can tomatoes a lot like we do and most of them plant 100-200 plants each spring,so I don't feel like the only person here who is tomato-crazy. Sometimes in a really good year like 2010 when everyone has had all the tomatoes they want to eat and can, everyone starts calling around and inviting other people to come pick all the tomatoes they want. The problem is that no one needs those tomatoes in a good year when their own gardens are producing "too many" but "too many" is a nice problem to have than "not enough".

Dawn

Chandra, that picture is like "WHOA". I know, what is their secret!

Ezzi, It is simple. Good soil. Proper watering. Not too much nitrogen. That photo is exactly how peas will look in late April through late May and it is why I love growing them. If you can keep them happy and if the weather doesn't warm up too early, my peas do look like Osborne's and produce incredibly well. Unfortunately, since heat hits them hard, the difference in getting a great crop like the one in their photos and in getting a lesser crop can be as simple as a 2-week difference in the time that hot weather arrives. Also, the earlier you get the plants into the ground without exposing them to temps below the mid-20s, the better your chances of getting a crop like that. Your plants need to be healthy and large when the temps are right for them to start flowering in order to get maximum productivity. You can have thick, lush pea vines just like those in the photo and they will be simply covered with peas and then the temps spike up higher than the plants like and the plants decline very quickly, putting a halt to what was looking like a spectacular pea year. With peas, you cannot count your chickens before they hatch because the weather will break your heart and ruin your expectations.

When it is a good pea year, it will take a couple of hours a day for me to pick all the peas from my trellis which generally has 35-40 row feet of plants. I don't mind the time because we love them so and we eat them daily when they are fresh, and freeze the excess. I always share extra tomatoes, but I never give away snap peas because their season is so limited. I usually get to harvest peas for 1 to 2 months depending on how early they were planted and how early or late the weather heats up. Most years my peas are through producing by the end of May because of the heat, but every now and then, and I believe 2010 was such a year, they will last through part of June.

If your peas go in late or are pokey about sprouting, the plants will still be smallish when they begin flowering and the harvest will be lower.

The only varieties that give me lush, heavy plants like the ones in the Osborne photos are Sugar Snap and Super Sugar Snap. Most years, Super Sugar Snap produces better than Sugar Snap. I grow several other varieties most years (Spring Blush, Opal Greek Yellow, Golden Sweet and Cascadia for the last two years) and they do not produce nearly as heavily as SS and SSS. I plant more than one kind because in any given year, a specific variety may not like the weather or soil or rainfall and may not produce as well as usual, so by planting several varieties, I increase the odds of getting a great harvest.

The most snap peas I've ever picked in one day was on May 21, 2010 when I picked 10 lbs. and that was the peak of that year's pea season. After that, the most I picked in one day was 5 lbs. 13 oz. So, you see, snap peas can and should be very productive as long as the weather cooperates with the plants.

This year I wanted to plant 2 beds of snap peas, but then I went and used the second bed for asparagus, so I just have the one bed. With the early warm-up we'll either get a huge crop because the plants will grow rapidly, or if it continues to heat up and gets too hot, we might have a poor crop. That's always the issue with cool-season crops since the window of opportunity for them to produce is very brief. One of the big challenges of gardening here is that sometimes we go from 'too cold' to plant cool-season crops to 'too hot' for them all in the same week.

I used to grow shelling peas, but they produce a tiny amount in comparison to sugar snap peas, so I quit growing shelling peas probably about a decade ago.

I'm currently building two 4' x 12' raised beds inside my greenhouse and hope to raise sugar snaps in the greenhouse next fall/winter along with other winter crops.

If your pea plants do not look like Osborne's at the peak of pea season (at my house that is usually from late April through late May), examine your growing practices. Soil well enriched with compost? Adequate moisture? Weather in the right temperature range? Avoiding the use of fertilizers with a lot of nitrogen? That last one is really importance. Too much nitrogen gives you all vine and no peas. Also, watch carefully for signs of disease or pests. I always get the best yields from peas planted in a raised bed. If I plant in grade level soil, my harvest is half of what it is in a raised bed. That's likely because the soil in my raised beds is well-enriched, much more so than the grade level soil, and it also warms up earlier in February when the soil needs to be warm enough for the pea plants to get off to a good start.

To get a good stand of peas, your soil pH needs to be at least 6.5, and they generally produce well in soil as high as 7.5 If they are grown in soil that is highly acidic or highly alkaline, they don't produce as well. I have very alkaline soil, so have to work hard to get the pH down to the right range for them.

If you do not use a bean and pea innoculant on your pea seeds when you sow them, then you might not be able to get yields like you see in the photo. I have found that innocluating the seeds makes a huge difference, especially when I have rotated them to a bed where neither peas or beans grew the year before. If you are planting into a bed that had peas or beans the previous year, your soil likely has the bacteria in it and you wouldn't have to innoculate the seeds. I always innoculate mine, though, because the season is so short that I don't want to take any chances on not getting the maximum productivity from the plants.

When watering, keeping the water off the foliage helps decrease the incidence of leaf disease, but in a wet year, you may have to spray the plants with a fungicide.
Dawn

I never see innoculant in the stores, and usually forget to order it. I like to add it though, when I can remember to have it on hand.

I don't grow as many as Dawn and Dorothy do, but we do love them. Mine don't look as nice as the picture, but they produce very well most years. I plan to have them for the month of May, but sometimes I get a little longer production. I will never be able to tell you how many I grow, because we stand in the garden and eat them raw anytime we pass the trellis. LOL

One word of caution. They like to cling to each other more than they like to cling to anything I have every grown them on. If you don't tie them up, the wind will blow them over and the entire patch will go down at one time and it will be hard to get them back up again. They don't twine up the supports like pole beans do. When mine are about a foot tall, I run a line around them to pull them into the trellis before they fall over, then I do that about every foot until I get to the top. I also plant on both sides of the trellis hoping that they will reach through and hold each other up by clinging to each other with the trellis in between.

I only planted two types this year, Oregon Sugar Pod II on my chainlink fence and Sugar Snap from Baker Creek on trellis. I planted the fence and the first trellis at one time, and as soon as they came up I planted seed on a 16 foot cattle panel. So far, they are loving this weather and they look really good. Last year I grew Sugar Snap, Super Sugar Snap, Cascadia, and Oregon Sugar Pod. While they all produced, Sugar Snap and Super Sugar Snap are always the most productive, and still my favorite.

I like tall vines like SS and SSS best, but I ordered a large quantity of Mammoth Melting Sugar a couple of years ago and they sent a sub of Oregon Sugar Pod which are about half as tall, but I am trying to use up the seed so I will probably be growing them until they won't germinate anymore. LOL

Carol, At the Home Depot in Gainesville in recent years, they have had small packets of pea and bean innoculant on the Burpee seed rack. I don't remember seeing any this year, but I wasn't looking for it either. The last time I saw some there, it was in a white seed packet with green lettering and was on the top level of the veggie seed section right above the beans. Anyone who is looking for some might find it at an HD.

I order it in the big old 8.7 oz. can by Nature's Aid and it lasts me forever and forever even though I plant tons of beans and peas. I just looked at the bottom of my can and it expired 12/31/11. I'm going to keep using it, but I'll order some more the next time I order something from a seed company, which could be soon. I am trying to make my list of seeds I need for the fall garden so I can be ready. I like to order them in spring so that they won't be sold out when I need them in summer.

Standing in the garden and eating them raw is why I gave up on weighing them and keeping track of the harvest. It seemed pointless to record a weight that I know is inaccurate because it doesn't include all the snacking in the garden. When I am picking, I can eat one for every one I put in the harvest bucket if I am not careful. Tim always wonders why I am not hungry in late spring/early summer when I come in from working in the garden all day. Ha! If he only knew how I graze like a cow out there all day long, he'd understand. He'll say "wanna go out for dinner" and I'll reply "Um, I'm not hungry". Then he'll give me that look...you know the look I mean, the look that says I answered the question incorrectly. lol

My garden is going insane in this sunshine and with all that moisture. Some of the older tomato plants have grown tremendously the last couple of days, and one of the Chocolate Cherry tomato plants has tomatoes that are almost full-sized. I think that taking the risk and planting early will pay off this year. If it wasn't so wet, I'd be out there planting every square inch of ground.

When the pea vines blow over, I tie them back to the trellis. I do wish they'd climb better than they do.

Next year I may try some of the new leafless ones to see how they perform.

What is this thing you are calling sunshine?

Ok, I've got to chime in here about that pic Chandra posted. My peas never look like that with pea pods from the bottom to the top because I PICK mine starting at the bottom when they are ready. Who am I kidding, I get so eager for fresh peas, I pick them before they are at their best. (Peas put on from bottom to top and mature from bottom to top.) So by the time I am picking at the top there is nothing left on the bottom. To my eye it looks like some of these are overmature for best eating. So I am wondering if these are being grown for seed or just to take an impressive photo. Except for that though, my vines do look like that in a good year with peas from the middle to the top at the same time. And I support mine like that, like Carol described, by running string every foot or so to tie them to the trellis--cattle panels in my case.

I did make a mistake this year. I planted my second batch of sprouted seeds directly into the ground, and got only about 1/4 of them to break ground. I know the seed was good because it was sprouted. My clay soil just didn't allow them to come up. The third batch is in t-p tubes and will be ready to go into the ground just as soon as I can get back into the garden.

Thanks for all those nice tips. This my second year growing peas in large numbers. Last year probably because of heat, my pea plants never become like Osborne's, before to that, in 2010, I started very late. Something went wrong in the last years. But I hope grow them like you all this year, our peas plants looks great. Dawn yest used nature's pea and beans inoculant. I mulched peas beds with 4" straw then put couple of inches of the compost on top of the straw. I also planted few fews in greenhouse, they are growing much faster than outside plants.

Peas in the greenhouse, they need some support!

-Chandra

Once again, lovely pictures! I was glad to see them because I can see that mine are not too thin! LOL! I was thinking I had some thin scrawny plants! LOL. This makes me happy knowing they are supposed to look like that...

Carol, Sunshine is that bright light in the sky that emanates from the sun. We have it here today in full force. Hooray! I was tired of all the clouds and so were the plants. They all look so perky today.

Dorothy, lol lol lol Every single day after the peas appear, I have to fight myself to keep from picking them and eating them before they size up to more or less full size. I agree that some of those in the photo are overmature, and I assume they did that on purpose to show the potential productivity of the peas in the photo. Someone who hasn't grown peas and doesn't realize they mature from the bottom up would look at half-harvested vines and wonder why there weren't any peas down low, so I think they wanted the plants to show that they'd produce peas from the bottom to the top of the vines.

Chandra, Everything in my greenhouse is growing faster than the stuff in the ground too, but that will change now that the weather is heating back up and the sunshine is reappearing.

Ezzirah, Early on they will look that way. Once they are climbing the trellis, they'll get very lush. You won't believe the difference in the pea plants in early April versus early May. They get really big really fast. They have to, so that they can produce before the heat burns them up and finishes them off.

Think of tomato plants. You can put them into the ground when they are 6 or 8 or 10" tall in late March or early April. They will start growing, and once the temps are in the range they prefer, they can easily grow an inch taller (or more) every single day. By June, the plants can be 5 to 6' tall. Peas have to grow even more rapidly than that in order to produce before the heat arrives.

Often, when it seems like plants are not growing much above the ground, they are just busy making the root systems below-ground that they will need to sustain their period of rapid growth, flowering and producing their edible portions.

Dawn

The outdoor plants look fine; the inside ones are a bit leggy.

Dawn, thanks for the explanation of the sun, for we have forgotten what it looks like up here. Supposedly it will return tomorrow and it will be a welcome site for sure. It has plenty of work to do here since our rain total for this system is at 6.97 inches and we still have a chance for a 'few showers' today. Of course, it may be short-lived since the forecast for Tues, Wed, and Thurs is 'isolated thunder storms'.

My peas seem to be loving the weather and they look really good. I had planted some radish seed the night before the rain started and they look like they just floated up and started to germinate. I'm surprised that the birds haven't eaten them yet. I may just go scatter a little potting soil over the top and see what happens. My broccoli plants were awfully small to endure this kind of abuse so I will probably lose a few of those and maybe a few onions. My chances are a lot better if it begins to dry some before the next rains hit. This is why I try to plant early, because we always get Spring rain, but it came a few weeks early this year before things had time to establish.

We are picking a few asparagus spears every couple of days, but it loses a little of it's magic when you have to go through the mud to get to them.

I am so tired of rain!!!

Oh my. This post is making me HUNGRY.

Dawn, I finally got them in the ground. The heavy rains just didn't allow me to amend the soils they way they need. At any rate, I plugged them in the ground putting a few in garden beds where I know the soil has been worked a little. More and more I'm getting the impression this is just a "soil" year. Plant as much as I can and not worry too much but focusing on amending and enriching the soil for better luck next year.

But this MUD, ugh! I'm grateful grandmom mentioned picking from the bottom early. I'll be certain to pick early to spur production on what little I do get. Who knows? They may love it out there. Only one way to find out. I had such a hard time planting those poor seedlings. The unlevel surface from which I stood caused me to clumsily snap some roots. Live and learn. Tomato seedlings are looking sharp, though!

Dawn,
Our peas are almost near to Osborne trails... only difference is we have been picking them continuously...nature's inoculatant has magic!

Cheers -Chandra

Chandra,

They look great and I bet they taste yummy. See there, it isn't all that hard to have plants that look as good as Osborne's, is it?

I do think innoculant makes a difference in soil where you haven't grown legumes before. I innoculated all my peas and beans this year whether they were growing in soil that had legumes last year or not. Except for the peas stalling in all that heavy rainfall, they've done really well. The beans were planted after the heavy rain and they've done even better. Now, if we can just keep the hail and other wicked weather from getting them, we'll be harvesting beans next week, only two weeks after the first peas were ready to harvest.

It is such an odd weather year.

Dawn