How to get more peas off the same plants

Getting more peas out of the same row

Peas are one of the few crops where the single biggest thing you can do costs nothing at all, and most people never do it. A pea plant is working towards seed, so the moment a pod is left on the vine long enough to fatten up and go leathery, the plant reads that as the job finished and it slows right down. Keep taking the pods off and it keeps putting out flowers, which means the difference between a fortnight of peas and 6 or 7 weeks of them is mostly down to how often you walk past with a bowl.

Pick early and pick often

Take the pods while they are plump and still tender, before the outline of the peas goes knobbly through the shell. Go over the row every second day once it starts, and pick everything that is ready even when you have more than you can eat, because leaving a few on to catch later is exactly the signal that shuts the plant down. Anything you cannot get through will blanch and freeze, and shelling peas on the back step is a decent way to spend 20 minutes.

Snow peas and sugarsnaps want picking even younger, while the pod is still flat or barely filling, and they go stringy fast if you leave them.

Give them something to climb

Peas will scramble along the ground if you make them, and they will give you a smaller crop and more disease for the trouble. The tendrils want something thin enough to grab, so wire, netting or twine strung between two stakes works better than a fat timber frame. Getting the plants up off the ground keeps air moving through them, keeps the pods clean, and makes it a great deal easier to see what is ready, which brings us back to picking.

Put the support in before you sow. Pushing stakes in around an established row tears roots, and a pea plant that gets knocked about early takes a long time to catch up.

Water deeply, not often

Peas want steady moisture and they hate sitting wet. A deep soak once or twice a week sends the roots down where the soil stays cooler, and a light daily sprinkle does the opposite by keeping everything in the top few centimetres. Mulch along the row holds the moisture between waterings and keeps the soil temperature steadier, which matters because peas stop setting pods once it gets consistently warm.

Go easy on the nitrogen

Peas fix their own nitrogen through the nodules on their roots, so they are not a hungry crop and feeding them like one backfires. A high-nitrogen fertiliser gives you a tall, dark green plant with very few pods on it. What they will use is potassium once they start flowering, and a light liquid feed every couple of weeks through that stretch is plenty.

They also want lime rather than acid. If your beds have been growing acid-loving things or you have never tested, it is worth checking, because peas sulk below about pH 6.

Sow in stages

The other way to stretch the season is simply to not sow it all at once. A short row every fortnight through the cool months means one lot is finishing while the next is starting, and you never have the situation where everything comes at once and then it is over. It is the same trick that works on lettuce and radish and it costs nothing but a bit of planning.

When the row is finished

Cut the plants off at ground level rather than pulling them out. The nitrogen the plant has fixed is sitting in the root nodules, so leaving those in the soil hands it straight to whatever you plant next, and the tops go on the compost heap. It is the cheapest fertiliser you will ever get and it is already in the ground.

Shop related products

• Brunnings Potash Power 2.5kg. The potassium feed for the flowering stretch.
• Brunnings Garden Lime 3kg. For beds that have gone acid, which peas dislike.
• Martins Organic Sugar Cane Bale 11kg. Mulch along the row to keep the moisture even.
• Manutec Soil pH Test Kit. Worth doing once if you have never tested a bed.
• Seasol Seaweed Concentrate 1L. A tonic for seedlings going in and through a stressful run.

Did you know we keep garden stakes in hardwood, bamboo and plastic-coated steel in the shop, along with garden twine and lattice for building a frame. Pea Greenfeast, pea Sugarsnap and snow pea seed are on the rack in store as well. None of that is fully listed online, so give us a ring on (08) 8536 4333 to check what is there.

The rest of the range is in our garden centre.

Keep reading

• How to build a trellis for climbing vegetables
• When to pick vegetables, crop by crop
• Crop rotation in a home vegetable garden, and why it works

I eat about a third of the pea crop standing in the garden and I have decided that counts as picking.

Candeece
Strathalbyn H Hardware