What's up with Peas?



It's time to plant peas, another early season and cold hardy crop. I'm talking about those sweet little nuggets of green goodness that grow in their little green pod. The traditional date to plant them is St Patrick's Day, March 17. That is if the snow is gone and you can get into your garden.! It takes about 2 months to harvest and they don't like hot weather so the earlier the better.


I bought pea seed from Agway last week and I was able to call in my order, pay for it on the phone and pick it up curbside. I also bought inoculant. Microbial inoculants are agricultural amendments that use beneficial microbes to promote plant health. Peas are a legume which means they have the unique ability to "fix" nitrogen. All plants require nitrogen to grow and nitrogen fixation occurs when nitrogen in the air is converted to nitrogenous compounds in the soil. This fixation is carried out naturally in the soil by microorganisms, and some of these soil microbes have symbiotic relationships with plant groups, especially legumes. Now you don't have to add inoculant when you plant your peas, but the symbiotic relationship the Rhizobium bacteria has with peas brings greater nourishment to the plants resulting in better growth.


pea seed


Read your seed packets, good info there!




inoculant


soak your pea seeds overnight before planting





I planted one row of peas in the Science Center courtyard on April 2

plant them in a shallow trench to a depth 1.5x seed size






cover, tamp down, lightly water in


And another batch of seeds planted at home in a container. This is the first time I have tried growing peas in a container.


these cloth bags are great for container growing



Planting peas always makes me think of my father. He was a lawyer by trade and a farmer at heart. I was lucky enough to grow up on an old farm in northwest Connecticut. We had a huge garden, fruit trees, berries, chickens, horses and at one time a donkey. Every fall my father applied a thick layer of well rotted horse manure to the garden and to the asparagus bed, and every spring we feasted on small green mountains of fresh asparagus and peas dripping with butter. As far as I know, everything was grown organically although my Dad wouldn't have used that term. It was just what he knew. I couldn't understand why people hated these vegetables until I realized they had only ever had them out of a can. I didn't know how lucky I was to have such delicious, fresh, home grown vegetables until I was older.

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