Little Marvel Pea Seed.

We’ve always dreamed of getting our peas in the soil on St Patrick’s Day as many “old-timers” suggest.

We never have.

Though our raised beds tend to warm up to a workable temperature about a week before the ground does, they’re still giant solid muddy ice cubes on the day we drink green beer.

We usually have to wait till early-to-mid-April to get ours in the ground.  We plant five different heirloom varieties because we love them so much, their season is so short, and their yield is relatively low. It’s important to get peas in the ground as early as possible, since when the days reach 80 degrees or so, they stop blossoming and fruiting. We are lucky enough to get a second fall crop in by planting in early August.

Many sources suggest coating peas with an inoculant (a Rhizobia bacteria that lives in the soil, helps the pea affix nitrogen from the air, and speeds germination) before planting. Since we rotate our beds, we introduce peas to new soil most every year. And since we’re often forgetful, we probably use inoculant about every other year. We really have seen much difference, but for insurance sake, we suppose you should probably use it.

Peas will need to be trellised somehow. But no need to worry about that while you’re trying to keep the frostbite away while sowing them. We’ll deal with that in a later post.

While it’s suggested to plant peas about 1-2 inches apart, in double or triple rows, we plant our seeds a little closer together than recommended. This is because we love to use peas shoots in some of our season’s earliest salads. We simply clip every other seedling to thin them out. (Never pull shoots up from their roots. The neighboring peas don’t like having their roots disturbed. At all – really, they get pretty peaved about it.)