Tips For Beginner Vegetable Gardeners

Use these tips to start growing peas in your home vegetable garden. Whether its sugar, snap, or shelling peas, there are lots of options from spring to fall.

While growing peas outdoors is most common, you can also grow peas indoors any time of year.

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Getting Started

Before we dive into the pea-growing tips, it’s important to note that we’re talking about green peas—a vegetable crop—not ornamental sweet pea flower vines.

While both belong to the Fabaceae family and produce beautiful flowers, there is an important difference.

Peas are edible and sweet peas are not.

• Peas (Pisum sativum or Lathyrus oleraceus) are cool (not cold) season, annual vegetable crops known as legumes (Leguminosae). Other popular legumes include beans, soybeans, alfalfa, peanuts, and chickpeas.
• Sweet peas—the plants we grow for their beautiful vines and flowers—may be annual (Lathyrus odoratus) or perennial (L. latifolius) and must never be consumed. This guide has tips on growing sweet pea flowers.

Gardeners new to growing green peas are often surprised to learn that it’s not just the peas and pods that are edible but the sprouts and shoots as well. This means you don’t have to wait until the end of the growing season to start harvesting but instead can enjoy them all along the way.

Contents

How to Sow, Grow, & Harvest Peas

Like many vegetables, there are far more varieties of peas available than you’ll ever find in a grocery store. Grocery stores tend to have one or two types while seed catalogs are overflowing with options.

No matter which varieties you choose, you can’t go wrong.

I like to try something new each year to find my personal favorites.

Planning

Types of Peas

There are three basic types of peas—shell, snow, and snap. Some grow bushy while others are climbing vines.

Peas are also categorized as early or main season types. The early ones can produce seed pods at lower temperatures than main season peas can.

These next two groups are sometimes referred to as mangetout, the French term for “eat all” because all parts of the pea plant are pleasant to eat.

Pea Seeds

What are pea seeds?

Botanically, the pea pods we eat are fruits and the actual green peas inside are seeds.

Pea seeds look like shrivelled up peas because that’s exactly what they are! They dry up and change color as they reach physiological maturity.

Location – Where to Grow

We think of peas as an outdoor crop growing in the ground but they are much more versatile than this.

• Outdoors, you can grow peas in containers, raised beds, hanging baskets, or the ground.

Soil or Potting Mix

The ideal soil is well-draining loam routinely amended with finished compost.

For container growing, use organic potting mix made for vegetable growing.

Timing – When to Grow

Peas are a cool weather crop, doing nicely when sown in spring when the soil is warming and workable before summer heat sets in.

You may have heard the old expression, plant peas when the daffodils bloom. While not a fool-proof trope, it’s not uncommon to have daffodils in bloom when conditions are right for sowing pea seeds.

The optimum soil temperature range for germinating pea seeds is 50 to 70°F (10 to 20°C).

While the optimum sowing temperature for peas is around 60°F (10°C), they will tolerate temperatures as low as 40°F / 5°C. Growth likely won’t happen until temperatures warm up but this cool tolerance gives us flexibility with our sowing schedules.

This is the type of thermometer (Amazon) I like for measuring soil temperatures. Take several readings at various times of day over several days to confirm readings are consistently within the desired range.

Related: Chart of Best Soil Temperatures for Vegetable Seed Germination

Suggested Sowing Times

After experimenting with a variety of pea-growing methods, these are the sowing timelines I prefer here in my cold climate garden in southwestern Ontario, Canada.

Spring

• Raised beds or containers – 6 to 8 weeks before last frost
• In-ground – 5 to 6 weeks before last frost

Mid-summer For Fall

• 10 to 12 weeks before first frost (choose dwarf varieties) and mulch when plants are 6-inches tall to keep the roots cool and moist in summer heat.

Indoors

• Sow any time. When sprouted, keep grow lights on 12 hours per day.

Sowing Pea Seeds

Pea seeds are mature, dried up peas from the pods.

Always read the entire seed packet for specific sowing instructions and tips.

Sow peas 1-inch deep, spaced 2-inches apart

Generally, it’s recommended to sow peas approximately 1-inch deep, spaced 2-inches apart. It’s ideal to have walking space between rows if growing in the ground.

While it is sometimes recommended to soak pea seeds prior to sowing, this makes little or no difference and risks rotting the seed.

Choose a sunny spot with well-draining soil. This shows how to test how well-draining your soil is.

I also grow peas in part-shade. Growth can be slower but this can also help prevent overheating in the summer sun.

To sow the seeds, poke your finger tip into the soil and drop a seed in each hole. Fill in the soil, gently pat it down, and water everything thoroughly. Add more soil if any seeds are exposed after watering.

• Germination typically happens within a week if conditions are right.
• Germination rates average around 75%.
• Pea seeds remain viable for approximately two years.

What to expect: sprouts -> stems with leaves and tendrils -> flowers ->pods -> peas

Trellis

Most peas benefit from support as they grow, particularly the tall, vining varieties.

Options include some combination of trellis, twine, wire, willow rods, or chicken wire. I like a setup where I can train the plant up trellis as it grow and keep the plant accessible from both sides.

• Most dwarf varieties grow like little bushes reaching 2 to 3 feet tall.
• Tall vine peas can reach 6 to 9 feet tall.

Don’t be dismayed if your pea vines take off on you! During peak growing season they can grow by leaps and bounds, making it nearly impossible to keep everything nicely trellised.

Succession Planting

Succession planting means to stagger crops throughout the growing season.

I like doing this as insurance—in case one crops doesn’t thrive, another may.

Consider starting pea seeds every few weeks until midsummer.

Try different types and see what works best where you are.

Make Notes

Keep track of what you sow: variety, date, days to maturity, growing conditions. I also add the harvest time in my google calendar so I don’t miss It.

Growing

Protection

Your seeds and seedlings will need protection from animals and any unusually cold or wet weather.

I use a combination of mesh waste baskets from a dollar store (placed upside-down) to act as cloches and frost covers (floating row covers). Together they work nicely keeping birds and mice out and warmth in. This has more uses for mesh waste baskets in the garden.

If you are growing in raised beds, consider using garden screens like these ones.

Care

Water | If spring brings rain, you may never need to water your peas. Keep an eye on conditions and only water if the soil is getting dry. They like moderately moist conditions.

Mulch | Once the peas plants are several inches tall, I like adding a few inches of mulch around them to help retain moisture in the soil and to support the plant until it’s tall enough for its tendrils to latch onto the trellis.

Support | As your plants reach trellis height, encourage the tendrils to grab hold. I use a combination of reusable soft plant ties and twine as needed. As mentioned, peas can really take off once they start growing so do what you can to keep them tied up but don’t fret if they become a little too enthusiastic.

Fertilizer | Instead of using fertilizers, keep your soil fertile by adding finished compost as needed. I have grown countless vegetables over the years and have never applied a fertilizer.

Flowers

Peas are open-pollinated and self-pollinating meaning they pollinate themselves. Because they release their pollen prior to their flower buds opening, cross-pollination is uncommon.

Harvest

As mentioned, peas are edible from the time they sprout onward and I highly recommend trying everything: sprouts, shoots, stems, pods, and peas.

Some gardeners are surprised to learn that sprouts, shoots, and stems taste just like the peas themselves.

The harvest time listed on the seed packet refers to the end game—when you have harvestable peas in pods.

The lowest pods on the plant mature first, so harvest from bottom to top. If you’re not sure when to clip them off, just taste one and see what you think.

As you gain more experience each growing season, you’ll discover those magical few days when the pea plant reaches its maximum sweetness.

Once picked, eat the peas that same day or get them into the fridge or freezer before the sugars change to starch.

Seed Saving

If you want to save pea seeds for future sowing, wait until the peas have dried in the pods before harvesting. They turn yellow during this phase.

Soil Replenishment

The entire legume family including peas have a special place in gardening and for life on earth in general due to their “nitrogen-fixing” abilities.

Legumes work with bacteria called rhizobia to pull nitrogen from the air and convert it into a form that plants can use.

Our plants are surrounded by nitrogen—it’s nearly 80 percent of our air—but they can struggle at times to get enough of it because it’s not in the right form.

Legumes are one of the few plants that, working with bacteria, can take nitrogen from the air and make it available to plants.

While living, the legume is mostly helping itself, but, when the plant dies, that nitrogen can now carry on cycling into forms that also used by other plants.

Pests & Diseases

While pests and diseases are always possible, peas tend to be fairly trouble-free.

If you see a gray-white powdery coating forming on your peas, it could be powdery mildew. The type that affects peas is called Erysiphe pisi. This discusses powdery mildew prevention and treatments.

Other problems that may come up: pea moth caterpillars, and assorted fungi, bacteria, viruses, pathogens, and insects including pea leaf weevil. I’ve never experienced any of these and I hope you’re just as lucky.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are peas frost-tolerant?

Peas (Pisum sativum) are cool-tolerant and somewhat frost-tolerant, but only to a point. If you get a real freeze, you may be out of luck. This is one reason why gardeners like to stagger or succession plant their peas, starting before last frost. Even if one crop freezes, another may succeed.

Can you transplant pea plants?

Peas have a reputation for being fussy about transplanting, doing best when sown directly in spring when the soil is warming and workable. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try.

If you have started peas indoors or purchased starter plants, there are ways to minimize shock.

First, harden off your plants prior to planting. To harden off means to gradually acclimatize the plants to outdoor conditions.

Next, when planting, choose a site you know peas like, and, when planting, avoid disturbing the roots as much as possible.

What are split peas?

Split peas are dried, peeled, split (finely sliced) peas. They are popular in recipes including split pea soup.

Resources

~Melissa the Empress of Dirt ♛