Pease Porridge hot, Pease Porridge cold

Time to confess. I haven't had much success with peas. I've often heard it said that peas are extremely easy to grow and so are great for the beginner. You just put a few seeds in the ground and there you go. Except mice love the seeds. And slugs and snails love the young plants. As do pigeons. And don't even get me started on the pea moth. So for the past couple of years, while I have had a pea harvest, it hasn't been much of one. And the road to a few delicious mouthfuls of yummy sweet peaness has been paved with disappointment and despair. Until now. I think.

I have a new system of growing them that seems to work for me as it avoids the mice, slugs/snails, and pigeons (though not the pea moth - that will require other precautions). I sow the seeds into individual modules, let them germinate and get to about an inch tall (on my windowsill), move the trays to the lottie, and leave them undercover to harden off for a week or so. Then I plant them out and put in pea sticks immediately (even though they don't have tendrils yet). So far, and I don't want to tempt fate, this seems to be working. I haven't really lost any and there hasn't been a tremendous wastage of seed as there was when I was feeding all of the mice on the allotment.

 

 
And now to the heart of it...what peas am I growing this year? So far, these are the ones I have either planted in the ground, are waiting to be planted in the ground, or are busily germinating on my windowsills...

Hurst Green Shaft
Carlin
Lancashire Lad
Chibby's Wonders
Goldensweet Snowpea
Purple Goldensweet Snowpea
Douce Provence
Defiance
Telephone
Capucijner
Turner’s Spring
Tom Thumb

They're a mix of standard garden peas with the slightly less standard. Telephone and Turner's Spring are tall varieties which will require more support. Carlin and and Capucijner are eaten as cooked dried peas. More about Tom Thumb in another post. And the one I'm most interested in this year is 'Purple Goldensweet Snowpea.' Last year I grew 'Goldensweet Snowpea' and they mostly did what they said on the packet: produced beautiful plants with lovely golden/yellow green pods. Except for the ones that didn't. A few produced purple pods and I saved the seeds from those and kept them separate from the seeds of the yellow/green podded ones. I'm no Gregor Mendel, but I'm hoping to get some plants that will reliably produce purple-podded snowpeas/mangetout. We shall see.