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Natural Girl[_2_] · 26-04-2013, 07:02 PM posted to rec.gardens.edible

Bruce Esquibel wrote:
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

I grew some peas last year for the first time and had just enough to have
snacks right off the plants. They were so tastey I thought I'd try to grow
some more this year. First, I started about a dozen plants in peat pots and
then planted those and they are tall enough now to grab the fencing with
their little tentacles, but it seemed like I had room between those plants,
so I poked holes in the ground between each one and planted more seed. I
was wondering just how close you can plant peas and not be too close?

--
Natural Girl