Planting Sweet Peas from Little Seeds to Harvest!Planting sweet peas is a great start off for a small organic garden! Sugar snap peas are unique to me; because I had neither eaten nor grew them before I came to Netherlands. One day I saw these sweet peas were sold in one of the supermarket during our regular weekly marketing. These are something different and I wanted to taste them. However, the price was pretty high; when I compared it to the rest of the snap beans. Afterwards, I understood from my mum-in-law that, such a type of vegetable was never in her vegetable shopping list. I was even more curious; so, I bought it for the first time. Sugar peas is also known as Sugar snap peas and pole beans (Peulen in Dutch). These peas are very sweet; especially the fresh harvests from your own vegetable garden. Growing peas is very interesting and fun. If you have a mini greenhouse or a cold frame, you can sprout the pea seeds as early as; in the late winter days. When seedling, set sweet pea seeds in one inch (about 2.5 cm) depth of potting soil would be sufficient; as they have shallow roots. Planting sweet peas plants begin with the small little pea seeds!
Sowing in early spring to mid spring direct in the open ground outdoor. If you have plenty of space, set them in rows about 2.5 feet (about 76 cm) apart; one to two inches apart from each other. These creeping vines needed bamboo sticks, trellis or wire netting for support. Set the trellis or bamboo sticks support before you sow your pea seeds. These sweet pea plant is about 3.5 feet (about 100 cm) tall. If you are using trellis or wire netting with more gardening space, you will notice that, you can plant more at one time; and the plants could climb higher to reach more than 5 feet (160 cm) in height; and obviously your harvest would be much more. Pea plants love a place with weed free, full sun and moist ground. Water pea plants regularly when the weather is dry. If you can provide them a ring to protect them from the underground unwanted insects; they will grow much faster. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Sweet peas are belong to the legumes group. Therefore, the pea plants will extract their own favourite plant food from the air. You need to provide only rain water and a good drainage of warm soil; the rest will be taken care by the nature. When near the end of the growing season, I was happy to watch the little birds playing around with our pea plants and searching around for their favourite insects. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Harvest in late spring to mid summer when the peas in the pods are clearly shown. Normally it will take about 60 days from seedlings to the first harvest. Try a brand new edible landscaping idea and occupy your frugal garden with these supper sweet pea plants? |
