Plant Peas for Spring

Garden peas are such a delicious vegetable: crunchy, sweet and nutritious. They are also a very short crop, but what a treat even if the harvest is only for 2 – 4 weeks. Succession planting extends the season, but even if you plant peas for spring with only one crop, rest assured that even a single planting of peas benefits the veggie garden, nourishing the soil and acting as a green manure.

Types of peas

Whether you opt for bush or climbing peas depends on the space, sun and time you have to spend in the garden. Bush peas don’t need trellising, although they still sometimes need support. Climbing peas need a little help to start climbing, but they may be the answer for limited space. They can be grown up a fence, up a tepee or on a trellis against a wall.

Other than the normal garden peas there are snow peas, also known as ‘Mangetout’. ‘Mangetout’ is French for ‘eat all’ and refers to the variety with large, flat pods that are tender yet crunchy and can be eaten whole. The pea seeds never really develop.

Sugar snap peas are a cross between a garden pea and mangetout, and have plump and round pods, like garden peas. The pods can be eaten when they start to swell, or they can be left to fill out and then shelled like normal peas. They are sweeter than garden peas and are not stringy.

When to plant peas

When to sow depends on the different regions. Garden peas need warmth to germinate, cool weather for growing and will not flower if the days are too short. They should ideally be timed to grow in winter and flower after the frost. In warmer areas, such as the lowveld and less frosty highveld areas around Pretoria, the eastern and western Cape, peas can be sown from March as an autumn crop or in June and July as a spring crop. In colder areas such as in highveld gardens, the Karoo and Northern Cape, as well as in the Eastern and Western Cape where there is a long, cool spring, garden peas are more of a spring crop and should be sown in July and August.

Planting and Growing

Sow in rows directly into the ground, or into pots for transplanting later.
Keep the soil moist during germination.
Once plants are established, water with care. The soil should be moist, but not too wet or allowed to dry out. Plants that dry out don’t produce pods. Cold, wet soil encourages fungal and rotting diseases
Mulch plants to keep the soil moist.
For climbing peas, put the supports in place at the time of sowing
Thin out the seedlings to a final spacing of 40cm between plants
Spread a light mulch around the plants to keep the soil moist
Support bushy plants by drawing the soil up around the stem. (Not advised in Winter-rainfall areas)
When preparing your soil, don’t add too much nitrogen. This produces leafy growth and poor yields. Use a fertiliser rich in potassium and phosphorus.
Feed weekly with a liquid fertiliser once the plant starts flowering.

To trench or not to trench?

If trenching is your preferred method, especially if you have heavy soil, dig a trench about 45 – 60cm deep. Loosen the soil at the bottom, add decaying vegetative matter (12cm deep), sprinkle in some manure and tread it in. Cover with a 15cm layer of soil mixed with manure or compost. Fill up the rest of the trench with good quality top soil to within 9cm of the surface.

Sow seed 3 – 4cm deep, and as the plants grow gradually fill in with soil so that the plants are deeply rooted. In gardens where soil is deep, fertile and friable, and drainage is not a problem, sow seed about 3 – 4cm deep and about 5cm apart in shallow drills. Seed can be sown in single rows or in double rows 15cm apart with a 75cm gap between the double rows, for easy working.

3 easy ways to stake climbing garden peas

In many regions in South Africa, July is the month to plant peas for spring. They can be started indoors four weeks before planting outdoors and transplanted into the garden two weeks before the last frost date, which is around September 15. Peas need 4 – 6 hours of sun and fertile soil that contains well-rotted compost and an organic 2:3:2 organic fertiliser. A good succession planting tip is to sow seed and plant seedlings at the same time. Seedlings should start podding within a month while seed takes 6 – 8 weeks to do so.

Climbing peas need to be staked and there are three easy ways to do this:

Push a 1.8m wooden stake/pole into the ground before planting or sowing seed at the base. Doing it as an afterthought could damage the roots of the plants. As the plants grows, wind it around the stake to get it going or tie it onto the stake. It is as simple as that.

Make a tepee by tying three poles together at the top with wire or twine. Spread the legs out equidistantly. Plant a pea at the base of each pole and train the peas upwards by winding them around the poles.

Make a cage using a large-hole wire mesh, big enough to put your hand through to plant the peas. Using cable ties, tie the ends of the wire mesh together to make a circle and secure it by attaching it to a few stakes pushed deeply into the ground. The soil should be prepared before placing the cage. Plant the peas inside the cage, either using two or three seeds per hole or planting a seedling.

Harvesting

Peas should be ready for picking within three months. The more you pick, the better the plants produce. Don’t let pea pods linger on the bush. For best nutritional value, eat peas as soon as possible after picking.

Garden peas are ready for harvesting when the pods are plump, but not full to bursting. Larger, older peas are not as sweet.

Snow peas (mangetout) just produce edible pods. They don’t lose their sweetness as quickly as garden peas, and can be stored for longer.

Sugar-snap peas are a cross between snow peas and garden peas, and are also cultivated for their edible pod. The pods are fatter than snow peas, and may need stringing.

When the show is over

Cut off the plants leaving the roots in the ground and add the tops to the compost heap, or just dig the whole plant into the soil while it is still green.

RECIPE: Use your peas to make a delicious pasta primavera. Check out the recipe here.