The excellent flavor and vibrant beauty of peas match the rich nutrition, which is just a lucky accident. All peas are good sources of calcium, iron and vitamins A and C. Those peas with edible pods provide a lot of dietary fiber and are excellent snack foods.

The "home-grown" difference between fresh peas and not-so-fresh peas must be tasted to be believed. Only gardeners and their customers know the sweet and crisp taste of fresh peas, whether they are shell peas, snow peas or plump crisp peas. If you grow all three types or buy them from a local farmer’s market, you will have everything you need to discover pea cuisine-pea cuisine is the source of several crazes in food history. In 1696, the Demante Farmer, wife of King Louis XIV of France, recorded: "Some ladies, even after having dinner at the royal table, ate very well, and when they returned home, risking indigestion, they would do it again. Eat peas before going to bed. This is both a fashion and a madness."

The pea she mentioned is an early variety of British shell pea, so named because British breeders developed many varieties with good flavor in the following centuries. Today, in addition to shell peas, we can also taste edible snow peas and pods. Generally associated with Asian food, snow peas have flat pods, while peas have thicker and rounder pods than flat ones. Now you can buy chickpeas in the frozen food section of major supermarkets, because they produce more food per square foot than other peas, and they are beautifully frozen, so they are the favorite of many gardeners.

Market gardeners like them too. Kevin Wilson of Powell River, British Columbia, said: “If you give people samples, they are easy to sell. It’s great to hear the crunch when they bite them.” He finally got 27 from the four rows of 20 feet. Pound peas spring, and then sell them at the farmers’ market by pints. The yield of peas is lower because the pods are not so fat, but they can also bring profitable crops, and the young leaves of some peas are good for eating in salads. The pods of British peas are hard to eat, so harvesting is limited to the juicy immature seeds of the plant. These seeds are far superior to canned peas, and there is almost no way to compare them.

Peas need a cool temperature below 80 degrees, so they grow best in areas where the cool weather in spring lasts until early summer. Maine, Wisconsin, and the Pacific Northwest have the most suitable climates for peas, but anyone who grows them in time in early spring can grow good crops. To ensure that the peas mature before the weather gets hot, plant the peas three weeks or more before the last spring frost. Young pea plants have no problem in the late cold wave, and the seeds are usually willing to germinate in late snow.

Pea is a nitrogen-fixing legume, which is a miracle, it involves the interaction between pea root and several soil-borne bacteria. As long as the soil is fairly fertile and contains a small amount of nitrogen left by the previous crop, no further feeding is usually required. An appropriate soil pH of approximately 6.5 is important for the smooth progress of the nitrogen fixation process, and bacteria also need to be present. They are usually found in the soil where peas were previously grown, but it is cheap and easy to inoculate pea seeds with nitrogen-fixing bacteria. You can buy an inoculant at the garden center (it also applies to beans). Just moisten the seeds, then put them in the pot with the powdered inoculant and shake before planting. However, it is always wise to correct the soil with half an inch to 1 inch of compost before planting peas.

Peas benefit from dense planting, where the plants are only 2 inches apart in the rows. Wilson planted peas in four rows, and planted two rows of peas on each side of the trellis on a 3-foot-wide bed. At Peregrine Farm in Alamance County, North Carolina, organic farmers Alex and Betsy Hitt use a four-row planting strategy to grow large amounts of peas; their method is also applicable to other types of peas.

"Our standard peas planting method is two rows of tall peas, such as'Sugar Snap', with a short row of peas on each side," Alex Hitt said. "There is a grid in the middle between the two rows of'Sugar Snaps'." This arrangement helps the tall variety stay upright until it starts to tendrils and grabs the grid. Because the high varieties did not really produce any peas below 24 inches, this lowered our yield, and several days in advance, came from the shorter varieties. "Hitt believes that dwarf varieties do not have much flavor or productivity, but he believes that they help tall varieties grow better.

The pea grid does not need to be fancy, but even short pea needs to hold something with tendrils. If you plan to grow peas that don’t bear grapes, a simple rope trellis hung on a post would be great because you can chop it down and compost the rope with the used vines. The nylon or plastic grid attached to the post (5 x 15 feet sold by the Garden Supply Company for less than $10) also works well. Many gardeners use cucumbers, lentils or other grape crops to grow peas, so they install a safety grid made of wire mesh and keep it in use throughout the summer.

David Fisher and Anna Maclay, owners of Natural Roots Organic Farm in Conway, Massachusetts, came up with an idea for an ultra-low maintenance scaffolding. They planted peas on upright oats: using a hand-push planter, they planted one oat seed peas for every five or six. "Oats and peas grow at the same rate and reach the same height of about 30 inches," Fisher said. This method is suitable for shells, snow and peas, and later, the farm animals start to clean the line.

Then there is the old practice of small limb peas collected from pruning fruit trees in early spring. This type of branch trellis is suitable for peas that are less than 30 inches tall, but taller varieties require more support.

When planted in cool, fertile soil with something to climb, peas can almost grow on their own. Then comes the fun part, picking peas-this is not without challenges. The sugar content of pea increases as the pod approaches maturity and is quickly converted into starch when the seeds mature. For snow peas and crisp peas, overripe specimens will also become hard and sticky, so when you think they are about to mature, check your peas every day.

Harvest English peas before the pods become waxy and when they are plump and sweet. When the small peas just start to swell in the pod, remove the peas. For peas, don't be misled by the flat pods sometimes found in supermarkets. Young specimens are well stored and transported, but they do not have the high sugar content of fully mature peas. "It is wrong to harvest peas too early or too late," Hitt said. "When they started showing the individual swelling of each pea in the pod, they picked them. Before that, they didn't produce the maximum amount of sugar. After that, they became tough and lean."

The dried peas used to make pea soup grow like other peas, and then let it mature until the pods begin to dry out. Some seed companies still sell "Alaska" varieties, but more choose to have brown, yellow or green peas, and some have beautiful purple pods. Jason of Salt Spring Seed Company, Salt Spring Island, British Columbia, keeps one of the best selections of seeds. The online catalog of Salt Spring can be found at www.saltspringseeds.com or you can write to Salt Spring Seeds, Box 444, Ganges, Salt Spring Island, BC, Canada V8K2W1.

Peas are cooked so fast that their taste will be affected when they are canned, but they are easy to freeze. If you grow good crops or find them at the farmers’ market, freezing is easy, just pour the washed peas or pods into boiling water for a minute, then scoop them out and put them in a bowl of ice water, then pack them Get up and put it into a container. Fill the freezer bag with bleached chilled peas, and then place the filled bag flat on the biscuit chip in the freezer. When the bags are frozen, they can be neatly stacked in a permanent location in the refrigerator. After freezing, English peas and peas can be stored for one year, but snow peas are best used within a few months.

When Washington State University (WSU) extension researchers noticed that pea vines sold for a few dollars per pound in the Seattle Pike market, they initiated a two-year study to evaluate the edibility of various pea leaves. After observing more than a dozen varieties including shell peas, crisp peas, snow peas, split peas and bone marrow fat peas (the type of peas fried into snack puffs), a tasting by chefs, farmers and extension staff The group agreed that the 4-inch long top produces the best vegetable from young snow peas. "Pea sprouts are a great addition to salad mixes, which are currently the most popular way to eat peas in the United States," said Dr. Carol Miles, a WSU agricultural system expert who directed the study. Myers says you can also lightly boil pea sprouts, or they can be used as edible decorations.

There are a few things you need to pay attention to when buying pea seeds. If you live in a climate with a shorter spring, choose fast-maturing varieties such as "Sugar Sprint" peas, "Oregon Sugar Pod II" snow peas or "Dakota" shell peas, all of which mature approximately 60 days after sowing . Powdery mildew resistance is easy to obtain, but if you live in the northwest, you can also look for resistance to pea mosaic virus, which can be used for "Cascadia" pea, "Oregon Giant" snow pea, etc. Small space gardeners will get more peas per square foot, such as higher varieties such as "Super Sugar Snap", but shorter varieties will bear all peas at the same time, which is helpful if you plan to freeze peas.

The following seed companies offer a variety of options, including series that allow you to sample multiple varieties in one season:

Johnny Select Seeds 955 Benton Ave. Winslow, ME 04910

Nichols Garden Nursery 1190 Old Salem Road NE Albany, OR 97321

Park Seed 1 Parkton Ave. Greenwood, SC 29647

Territorial Seed PO Box 158 Cottage Grove, OR 97424

Willhite Seed PO Box 23 Poolville, TX 76487

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