Growing Peas Is Easy

If you have never grown a crop from seeds before, growing peas from seeds is a great place to start. Because they can be planted directly into the soil, grow fast and require little maintenance, peas are a fantastic plant for beginning gardeners. Growing your own peas will also give you the extraordinary experience of tasting them when they are freshly picked. Because peas are sweetest right after they are picked and then quickly lose flavor, you have never tasted a pea as good as the one you grew yourself.

When To Start Your Seeds

The best timing for growing peas from seeds is to plant them in late winter and harvest them in spring. Because climates differ depending on where you live, just remember to sow your seeds about one month prior to your area’s frost-free date. If you live in a temperate climate, you can go by the old tradition of starting peas on St. Patrick’s Day. You’re not out of luck if you got a late start planting your peas this year. With a little shade to protect them from the sun, you can still look forward to a nice summer harvest.

Planting Your Seeds

As long as it’s not hard clay, growing peas from seeds can be done in any type of soil. If your soil is already damp, there is no need to prepare your seeds before sowing them directly into your garden bed. For dry soils, simply place seeds in a damp paper towel until sprouted. In your prepared garden bed, plant pea seeds about two inches down and space them two inches apart. Sprinkle a nice organic fertilizer or prepared compost over your freshly planted seeds.

Provide A Climbing Structure

Because peas are a climbing plant, it’s absolutely vital that you provide a structure for them to climb. There are many attractive structures you can build in your garden for growing peas from seeds. You can create a lattice wall, drape netting over stakes or let your peas grow up a fence. Whatever option you choose for your garden, remember that the more objects your peas have to curl their tendrils around, the faster and stronger they will grow.

Maintaining Your Pea Plants

Growing peas from seeds involves very little maintenance besides watering and training them to grow up the structure. Depending on your particular area, daily watering may not be necessary. Water your pea plants until the soil is wet but do not continue until the bed becomes waterlogged. As your pea plants first begin to grow, you will have to move their tendrils in order to help them grow up the structure. Once your plants have grown to about one foot, you won’t have to worry so much about training them.

Harvesting Your Peas

When you notice your first pods ripen, pick them right away. Keeping your pea plants well picked will encourage more growth. As you harvest your peas, make sure you are holding the vine with one hand as you pick with the other. This will prevent you from accidentally picking more of the plant than you meant to. Because peas taste best right after they are picked, plan a meal ahead of time when you see a lot of pods forming. Peas grow amazingly fast, so keep your pea sheller ready and look forward to many delicious meals.

If you are a small gardener with a productive crop of peas, the Mr Pea Sheller will make a fantastic addition to your kitchen gadgets. With its easy-to-use design, this pea sheller will save you hours of labor shelling peas. Using the built-in clamp, simply attach this device to a table to have it ready for each new batch of peas your garden produces. Available at an incredibly affordable price, a Mr Pea Sheller should be in every home gardener’s kitchen.

The unit itself is very safe to use and can be easily operated by one person. After securing it to a sturdy table, feed one pea at a time through the nylon mesh rollers. Turn the crank and the fresh peas will be separated from their pods and collected in a pan. If turning the hand crank is too burdensome, you also have the option of attaching a standard electric hand mixer to turn the device. With the electric mixer in place, just steady the pea sheller with one hand and feed peas with the other.

Harvesting your fresh peas is fun and easy with the addition of a quality pea sheller. When you discover how easy your MR Pea Sheller is to use in your kitchen, it will become as indispensable as your blender. Order yours today and say goodbye to hand shelling forever.

If you want to start a home garden, pea seeds are some of the fastest and easiest seeds to grow. Pea seeds can be planted directly into your outdoor soil, without the need to first germinate indoors. They will usually pop out of the ground after about 10 days and will be happy so long as temperatures remain on the cool side. This makes peas a wonderful crop for early spring or early fall, depending on your particular state. Remember to have some sticks or netting in place so your pea plants will have something to wind their way up as they grow. Planting next to a fence is also a great idea, because believe me, they’ll shoot up fast. Check out this video from urban horticulturist Mr. Green Thumb for some more tips on planting pea seeds.

With 394,667 acres devoted to peas farming, North Dakota leads the nation in the production of field peas, or “dried peas”. More than half of the field peas grown in the United States are grown in North Dakota, with the remainder of peas farming concentrated in Montana, Washington, Idaho and California.

The cool temperatures in North Dakota are just fine for the field pea. In fact, the country that produces the most field peas in the world is Russia. Field peas are sold as dried peas for humans as well as feed for livestock. Due to their high protein content and easily digestible nutrients, dried peas are a healthy staple in the diet of both humans and animals.

Watching a pea harvest in North Dakota is a lot different than the harvest of your fresh garden peas. Instead of picking each pea one by one when they are fresh, a giant tractor harvests them after they have dried.

Lucky for me, pea plants are some of the easiest and fastest growing seeds in the world. Whenever I plant my garden, peas are the first plant I see pop out of the ground and remain my most reliable crop throughout the season. As long as you can keep your pea plants well picked, you should expect new pods to keep popping up faster than you can say, “Get your pea sheller ready.”

Children love to plant peas because they don’t have to wait a long time before seeing them stick their heads out of the soil and get bigger and bigger in front of their eyes. You can enjoy some of the majesty of pea growing in this short, time-lapse video I found on Youtube about pea plant development.

The particular pea plant in this video displays a mutant gene that creates two leaves on each node.