- Peas are one of the
easier plants to grow with a few exceptional circumstances that can cause problems, like pests. In fact, this is some home saved seed that I let mature on the plant last year. I just left a few pots unpicked. It's a really easy plant to sow seed from. And I was just looking
there, there's a pea there, which is hollow and empty
from a little maggot called a pea moth that eats pea seed. And it's something that can happen if you sow them too late. This, in Britain at least, the pea moth is quite
common in the late summer. So it's a reason for sowing
these seeds not too late. Their best period of
growth is the early spring, mid-spring, late spring
to crop in early summer. And this is a nice way to start them off because you can be sure that
nothing's gonna eat them. Like if you sow these
in the ground(sighs), mice often eat the pea seed. It can be done, but this is more reliable. And in terms of containers, I've got, there's an old plastic one, for example. With containers, modules for sowing, it could be any old thing. The main thing is as long
as it's reasonably firm, so that when you come to
push or pull the plants out, it doesn't damage the polythene. For example, here, if that was too thin, that would tend to crack, and then that might damage the roots. Also the beauty of it,
obviously you can reuse 'em. This one I've used several times. See, it's starting to fall apart a bit. That doesn't matter, it's
basically mostly good. So what I'm doing is getting quite a lot of compost in there, particularly into the polystyrene one, which has a very open bottom. And that's because if you
don't push it in enough into the polystyrene, if you leave the compost loose in here, then it will just fall out the bottom. And it's the big difference
between soil and compost is that compost you can really squash and it's still good for roots to grow, much more so than soil, so you
can't really compact compost. So this one I'm just pushing
in gently because the, if you push these plastic ones too hard, that swells out the plastic
and then it's sort of fat and it's a job to push the
root ball out at planting time. Whereas the polystyrene, as you can see, I'm really pushing it in quite a lot. And I wanna get this
really full of compost, level it off a bit. And I'm just gonna make an indentation, which will be where I'm
going to sow the seeds. Now, the next thing is how many seeds? We can do a multi-sow here. I find that it works really well, peas for pods to put in two
seeds per station or cell. And I'm also pretty confident, because these are home saved
seed, I know they're fresh. Home saved seed is more
reliable in that way. You know when it's been harvested. 'Cause when you buy seed, it
just says packaged year ending. And sometimes it's not quite as fresh as one might like to imagine. So, there was three fell
in there, that is fine. Two or three is good. I wouldn't go more than that. That can be a bit crowded. And you'll see when we plant them that you can allow for spacing, final spacing with how many
plants you get coming up. So, this variety is alderman, which I'm gonna put
three in these actually, since their bigger amount of compost. Alderman is old-fashioned variety, which grows a traditional fat pea. It's not a sugar snap or anything. It's just a normal potting
pea but it's a tall variety. It's gonna grow two meters, six feet high. So it'll need some staking. And again, we'll see that later on when it comes to that time of year. So I'm just pushing them in a bit. And then I'm gonna drop compost on top and cover the seeds with compost. And that's gonna be it. After watering, these
pea seeds are going to go in the greenhouse undercover because, they are definitely one of the more prone seeds to pass damage. And I have lost a lot
of peas over the years, particularly to rodents and sometimes actually sweetcorn
more than anything I find. So when I'm sowing
sweetcorn in the greenhouse, I'll quite often keep a mouse trap charged and with a bait ready. And then just in terms of watering, when you do a first water, that compost was quite dry and I want to get it now, totally wet because for one thing, you
know where you are then there's no, there's less
risk of it drying out, but it means that the seeds are in this totally moist compost and they're not gonna
fail for want of moisture, at this stage they need moisture. As they get a bit older, funny enough, the first week or two, that's when you don't want to over water, cause young plant roots can get
a bit waterlogged sometimes, but at this stage, total
saturation is really good. And all we have to do now
is wait for them to grow and it'll be no more than three weeks. This is April, which is the
last sowing date really for sowing peas, you can start
as early as February. Peas for pods. I have a wider spacing
because you need room for them to grow and develop
and photosynthesize a lot to make the lovely flowers
and pods with peas. So here, especially these tall varieties, which is what I'm growing on this bed. These plants will grow
actually really big. So you can see they've got a lot of space. We planted these two rows
only four days ago actually, and they've really grown already. And this is a variety called alderman, which grows six feet, two meters high. And we're gonna put a
stake in the middle there, seven, eight feet, two and a
half meters with strings along. So these peas are gonna
go woosh, woosh, woosh, grow very fast in late
April and May to crop from about the middle of June. And they need a lot of
space for their roots and for their leaves to photosynthesize. So, that is alderman variety, which is a peas to actually
take out of their pods like a normal pea. And the one I'm planting
now is called tall sugar, which is what in Britain, we call a sugar snap pea. In America they're called
snow peas, I think. And the idea is you can, likewise let them get
nice and full of peas, but you also can eat the pod
as well as having the pea. So, these you will notice
are really quite small. They were sown only 10 days ago. And it's just an example
of how you can plant. You can set up plants
at pretty well any stage as long as the roots are not disturbed. One or two of these might be actually. This is limit. I wouldn't wanna plant
them any smaller than this. You can see how that
they're already developing quite a nice little root system there. And there's, we sowed two
peas in each little cell and mostly they're home saved peas, mostly two peas have come up. And I'm popping them in as
I always do, quite deep. So for a little while you can
hardly see anything there. They'll be fine because I'm gonna put the fleece over. And at the moment, the main function of the
fleece is not so much weather. Peas tolerate quite cool conditions. It's more rabbits, which
love little baby leaves, almost anything, but
particularly they do like peas. So, these peas by the way, have come straight out of the greenhouse, I haven't hardened them off or anything. It's warm up here now anyway. So that's fine. And the fact that they're
gonna have the fleece over it like this means that, that transitions the effect of being in the greenhouse
to being outside. And you will also notice that
this fleece has holes in, might be made by mice perhaps
when it was in the shed. Now, I'm not worried about that because I find the rabbits
here are not too curious about trying to eat anything
that's under fleece, and it's kind of ventilation. So, this fleece now stay
on for quite a long time, maybe three weeks, and you see already the
older peas pushing it up. So it's fine to do that. You just have it straight on the plants and then we'll take it
off and put the steaks in, in about three weeks. And then they really start to grow. This is five weeks later and these are the little pea
plants I popped in the ground in the cold of early spring. And I took them straight off the hot bed. to put them in here. So a bit of a shock for them, but look how well they've established. And they're really just
about to grow very strongly. Being tall peas, they are gonna grow tall. So, how are we gonna support them and enable them to reach that height? Well, before doing any of that, I just wanna point out
one more little thing with weeds as ever. Look at this fat hen weed hiding here. Do you see how well camouflaged it is? And wherever you are,
you'll probably have weeds with this ability to hide. So it's worth keeping an eye out, always for weeds doing that. Cause this one is clearly
gonna be very big very soon. So, whenever you're
doing any job like this, it's also, most bit of
multitasking you can do keep an eye out for other
things that need doing. Now, the supporting method is
there's many possibilities. The one I choose to use is
I put in tall stakes here, two meters over six feet, and they're gonna have strings on right the way up to the top like this. But before I even get, or
the peas even get that high, I put another little
string, a jute string, which is going to rot eventually, but that will be fine cause
it will have done it's job. It's just to guide the two rows of peas into a single little funnel, if you like. And then they go up and
their tendrils clasp onto the strings one provides like that. So, I'm gonna put in more strings about every 12, 15
centimeters, five, six inches going up and up. So it's like a latticework of strings. Now that's just my method
I use here, it's quick and it's also quick to take down. You could also, you could use stick You could use tall sticks as long as they got little catchy bits for a peas to hang on to, or you could wrap a few
strings around the sticks or you could use fence
posts, a bit like this, but not maybe quite so high
and then with a mesh fence. So whatever it is, it
just needs to be something that the peas with their
tendrils can hang on to. And we'll come back in a few weeks here and see how these peas
have grown up the string, so you can see how it actually works. So, now we have the first string there and a second string in place as well. So what I'm looking to do is
simply guide the growing point, the shoot of the pea
up through the middle. They're still a bit young to stay there. The wind will blow them around a bit, but it's really not long now with that it's warming up before these peas will grow, sometimes as much as three
centimeters a day and inch. And they're just going
up every day like that during May, late spring, this is their main period of growth. So I'll keep putting on more
strings as they do that. It's now the middle of June, and these peas have
grown fantastically fast in the last two months. It's their time of year to
grow, late spring early summer. They made loads of leaves, stem and then flower, as
they're doing at the moment and the flowers turn to pods. So we're quite close
to that joyful moment. I'll just mention before
explaining that about this, how well this support mechanism has coped. We've had one or two
quite violent winds here just exactly a week ago, in fact, and I added another support string on the far side because the
prevailing wind from behind me. That's what this side is actually
sitting nice and straight because the winds been
pushing them always that way, but it's held up, it's done it's job. And considering it's pretty windy here, you can see the peas
actually don't mind too much despite having tender stems
they're robust plants. And here is a beautiful variety,
the one called alderman, which is making these long pods. You see the plant is dripping
with them, or starting to. There'll be a period of harvest here, starting not quite yet. This is not quite ready. I'll show you in a sec. But basically once these start to crop, you've got about three weeks of going through every two or three days, looking for pods of the fatness you like. So what is a good fatness of pod? Well, here we've got one which is about the fattiest
I've been able to find so far. Now that looks not bad. You can see it's swollen, but
a characteristic of alderman, this is where it helps to know your variety a
bit and what they do. Alderman actually goes on
swelling for quite a long time. And it doesn't, the pod... The peas in the pod don't
get starchy, they stay sweet. So we're gonna find quite
small piece in here, or at least these are small for alderman. Very nice to eat though. And in terms of what alderman does, that's close to being a pitipua, which is the sweetest
kind of pea you could grow when they're still
immature peas in the pod, they have more sugar. These will go to double that
size and still be sweet, but proportionately have a bit more starch and actually give you a lot more food. So for me, I reckon
normally to harvest alderman at about five, seven days
from where they are now, unless it's really hot, it might be three. And then we got one, two
three(mumbles) 10 peas, you know, really nice variety, home saved seed. And that is the first harvest of the year of peas for pods of alderman. And if you don't mind,
I'm just gonna scoff them. Cause I'm curious to
see how sweet they are. Oh. That is like eating a
packet of sweets, actually. Amazing high level of sugar. And I have been watering
these a bit, but not too much. We've had a decent amount of rain. Peas do need plenty of
moisture to grow like this. If you're in a arid climate, maybe it's not worth trying to grow peas, maybe look at dwarf French
beans for example instead. They do like a damp climate with early summer warmth, not too hot. Here, we have the sugar peas. This is tall sugar, it's
the name of the variety. So again, up to two meters,
six feet, even more sometimes, and their pods are quite different. So, not so long. Smoother. And these are mange-tout, which means you can eat the whole pod. If we just have a quick look. Well actually what I
gonna do is top and tail, cause that takes the
string off both sides, and then all of that is edible. Normally you just eat that as it is. I'm just opening it up so
you can see what's in there. I can actually, Oh, there's seven, seven little peas and
two that semi aborted but all good to eat because
this pea has been bred to have no string in the pod. (man chewing ) Yum. These sugar snap peas like the
alderman will go on cropping for at least three weeks. So it's a question of
coming back time and again and looking for the harvest. And we'll see in a couple of weeks how many lovely mature pods
there are on these plants. Peas do come in many shapes and sizes. And here's a different variety
again, called small sugar. It's officially a dwarf pea, a dwarf type which the figure normally
quoted is 60 centimeters or two foot high, which is about there. And before the gale we had last week, these ones were up there, probably reflecting more than
anything the compost I use and the fact that this
growth is really strong, which means I've got more peace basically, but they've been a bit difficult to stake. I didn't put in quite
strong enough stakes, nonetheless, they are all good. And here's some peas that are ready. This is their harvest state
is not big fat pods at all. If you waited that long, if you're hoping for these peas to swell, you're going to have
some very stringy pods cause these are mange-tout types. So again, it's top and tail, both sides, take off those strings and that's the edible part. And we were just trying them this morning and actually they're not
the most impressive flavor. So this variety calls for more sugar. I'm not convinced I'd recommend it, but there is one called Sugar Ann which I've grown before and
that's more of a round pod, and that is very nice. This is more, we're gonna see in a sec, a different type of mange-tout, the mange-tout strictly speaking,
have more pod and less pea whereas sugar peas or snap peas
have more pea and less pod, but they are all strictly
speaking mange-tout, in the sense that you can eat
everything pod as well as pea. This is a classic mange-tout variety called Oregon sugar pod. And they have got a bit
hammered by the wind. It's very exposed here. I did not support them
well enough, you know. So you can see the result of doing that, how the peas blown off the
sticks that were holding it, not quite well enough. Another time I think
I'll run a string along. So you can see here, there
are rows across this bed, and they've kind of
merged because of the wind and it's gonna make
harvesting, picking difficult. So what it should be like, is more like that where
you can then get your hands between the rows to pick them. So, the harvest is here,
although not quite ready. That's about the biggest
one I found so far. This is second week in June,
so it's still early for them. In our climate these tend
to crop second half of June, and that is the harvest, but
that can be more swollen. You've got a range of options,
so that's an early harvest if you like of Oregon sugar pod, or in about five days or a week's time that would have swelled up, but you don't want to leave
it too much longer than that, cause then the peas get
not so sweet in there. And they're not very big anyway, this one is more about eating the pod. (man chewing) Actually, yeah, the pod has
a very nice flavor of itself, but not as sweet as actual peas. So you get another idea
of the range of options of food you can get from one vegetable and you can also be doing
pea pod or pea shoots here cause at this stage of
growth it's good to take that (man chewing) so that you can eat, and that will help the
plant to stop thinking of growing more or trying to, and concentrate into making pods.
