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Bruce Esquibel · 26-04-2013, 01:13 PM posted to rec.gardens.edible

wrote:
On Apr 20, 9:40?pm, " wrote:
I planted peas 5 weeks ago. ?They're just now starting to come up. ?So
far I've only seen only three seedlings out of whole packet of seeds.
I just noticed the third seedling today. ?What are the chances of the
rest of them coming up?

Two more plants are up today. That brings the total to five. At this
rate they should all be up by August.

I sure hope not.

Peas grow rather fast, I'm in Chicago and we have sort of a crappy growing
season, technically like May 15th to Oct 15th, but if you have any luck, you
can get things in the ground around Apr 1.

This is my 4th year for peas, in the past, for reference, using the plain
old Burpee seeds/pods from Home Depot, the average plant-to-seed ratio is
around 35%, meaning with 200 seeds planted, I only get like 60-70 plants
that actually spring up.

I don't know where you are at but you got them in the ground early enough.
Peas just don't like heat. From what I understand, they'll start dying off
and stop producing when the soil temp averages 75F. So they are like cool
weather plants.

Again here in Chicago, if I can get them in early april, by mid-june they
are going whole hog, but start dying out by the 4th of July. Anything that
is still there afterwards is hard and fiberous.

Once they sprout, they will grow rapidly and start showing pods early in the
growth cycle. Because I have to use cages to protect everything from
squirrels, raccoons, rabbits, possums and birds (yes we have all of those
here), they get up to about 4 feet, but will show pods around 18 inches.

Also keep in mind they need some help, there will be small tentacles that
come out, looking for something to grab on to, hopefully verticle. Without
that, they'll start to grab each other and eventually end up as a big
knotted mess.

There probably is 101 things you can use but what I ran across which comes
in handy for other things besides stablizing peas is a bundle of ceiling
hangers (for suspended ceilings) that Home Depot sells. There are something
like 50-60 "rods", 4 feet long, are fairly stiff but can be bent or cut as
needed. The bundle is something like $15 or less and like I said, just comes
in handy for numerous things.

They are easy to push into the ground around the plants and are stiff enough
to stay upright.

The bad news, if you do end up with just 5 or 6 plants, there isn't going to
be much eating there. At best each plant only seems to produce 10-12 pods,
but on average it's half that. Some book I read recommended something like
40-45 plants per person, to harvest enough. It's probably right, for all the
ones we grow, maybe 2 decent sized servings and enough left for being tossed
into salads.

Honestly though, even though they are a low-production plant, the damn
things are so tasty, it's worth it.

-bruce