This year I'm hopefully going to grow peas. But as a crop, I gather
they have their problems! Mice eat the seeds, slugs & snails eat the
shoots and leaves, the plants flop over, they get covered in aphids,
birds peck the flowers, and finally pigeons eat all the pods before you
get a chance to harvest anything. If by some miracle, you manage to
avoid all those hazards, you get a small crop for the amount of space.

Ok, I'm sure it's not as bad as all that, but it did get me thinking: I
have an ancient perpetual sweet pea plant that grows up through some
honeysuckle at the corner of my front porch. It's been there as long as
we've had the house (over 15 years) and it's more or less been left to
fend for itself for most of that time.

But left to its own devices, it romps away every year, growing 8 foot
tall (as well as into the rest of the flower bed and over the lawn if we
let it) and has masses of flowers that turn into masses of pods (when it
doesn't get deadheaded). It doesn't really seem to suffer from slugs,
aphids, birds or any sort of disease either.

So my questions: can you eat perpetual sweet peas? As mangetout, sugar
snaps or shelled peas? Do I want to?

Peter