Hands in the Dirt: Peas

Photo and article by Donna Iverson 
 
Astrological spring is here ..March 1.  And it’s not too early to plant cold hardy vegetables and herbs.  Many of these are salad ingredients like lettuce, spinach, chard, kale, radishes, carrots, and peas. Cold weather herbs include chives, mint, oregano, parsley, sage and thyme. In fact, by late February, parsley was growing in my community garden bed. Its arrival says spring is here.
 
As I am eager to get my salad garden underway, I’ll start with peas. They don’t take up a lot of space as I plant them on a trellis made with bamboo sticks and twine.  My trellis is in a straight line, although some of my fellow community gardeners use a teepee arrangement.
 
Planted in early spring, peas will be ready for harvest by June. Most of them won’t make it home, as I tend to munch on them right off the vine. As well as a gardener, I’m a forager at heart.
 
For beginning gardeners, peas come in three types:  snow peas, snap peas and shelling peas. Snow peas, also known as Chinese peas, have edible pods and seeds. They are excellent raw, off the vine, in a salad or stir fried.  The leaves and tendrils are also edible.
 
Planting peas is easy.  They are fairly large seeds that can be pushed into the ground about an inch apart and one inch deep. As for companion planting, peas like carrots as their neighbors but are tolerant of almost any other vegetable or herb growing nearby.  Although rumor has it they aren't especially fond of onions, They are somewhat susceptible to mildew, so provide a place where there is good air circulation, and don’t water from the top. Peas will grow in full sun or partial shade. 
 
Historically, peas are one of the oldest cultivated crops, dating back to the Neolithic period and likely eaten by both Homo sapiens and Neanderthals, nearly 46,000 years ago. Jumping ahead to the modern period, in the 1920s, Clarence Birdseye first froze peas and began selling them in grocery stores. He made a fortune. Today, frozen peas sell better than fresh ones, which are seldom available even at farmers markets as a result. But gardener know that fresh peas off the vine are way better than the frozen variety. 

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