Harvesting the Season's Peas

July 19, 2017

This time of year is always exciting at the farm because there’s so much to harvest in the gardens.

Down at my vegetable garden, both the shelling and the snap peas are ready for picking. If you recall, we planted many varieties last April, including ‘Maxigolt’, ‘Premium’, ‘Sienna’, 'Royal Snow’, 'Avalanche’, 'Oregon Giant', 'Green Arrow’, 'Amish’, 'Sugar Ann Og', and 'Super Sugar Snap’. It’s important to plant peas as soon as possible in spring in order to get a bountiful harvest come summer. I am very happy to share - our pea plants have been extremely prolific this season. My housekeepers, Laura and Sanu, harvested a lot of them not too long ago.

Here are some photos - enjoy.

: We planted many peas along both sides of our trellis – one side for shelling peas, which need to be removed from their pods before eating, and the other side for edible pods, which can be eaten whole, such as our snap peas.

: This photo was taken last spring when all our pea seeds were planted. Pea seeds may be planted as soon as the soil temperature reaches 50-degrees Fahrenheit. Peas grow best at temperatures of 55 to 64-degrees Fahrenheit.

: Peas can take as little as 54-days to mature, but they average about 60 to 70 days before they can be harvested.

: And just as scheduled, by early July these peas were plump, and ready to be picked.

: The pea, Pisum sativum, is an annual herbaceous legume in the family Fabaceae.

: Our peas are so fresh and green. The oldest known pea was found in Thailand – it was 3000-years old.

: The pea plant can be bushy or climbing, with slender stems.

: They are best grown on supports to keep them off the ground and away from many pests and diseases. We built several of these trellises last year. They support our peas, as well as our cucumber crops.

: Look how these tendrils cling to the net. Pea tendrils, also known as pea shoots, are the young vines, leaves, stems, and flowers of a pea plant – all parts are edible and taste like a cross between peas and spinach.

: Pea plants also have pinnately compound leaves, or pairs of leaflets arranged on either side of the stem.

: Sanu and Laura were able to pick many peas. This is best done in the morning, before it gets too warm.

: Shelling peas are also sometimes called garden peas, sweet peas or English peas. The pods are firm and rounded, and the peas inside are sweet and may be eaten raw or cooked.

: Harvest green peas when pods start to fatten, but before peas get too large.

: Be careful to pinch peas gently from the vine without tugging because the vines are fragile and easy to break.

: The pods can range in size from four to 15-centimeters long and about one-and-a-half to two-and-a-half centimeters wide. Each pod contains between two and 10-peas.

: This pea pod variety contains only four-peas.

: And this pea pod holds nine-peas.

: Snow peas are also known as Chinese pea pods. They are flat with very small peas inside, and the whole pod is edible.

: Sanu picked some from one fenced wall of the vegetable garden where they were planted.

: Snap peas are also edible-podded peas that differ from snow peas in that their pods are round as opposed to flat.

: Extend your harvest season by re-planting in two-week successions. Succession planting is the practice of following one crop with another to maximize a garden’s yield. It is an efficient use of gardening space and time.

: Peas don’t need much nitrogen fertilizer – they actually fix their own nitrogen from the air, and can even improve the soil by adding nitrogen to it.