Field pea harvest time… this calls for a pea party.
While no longer common in supermarkets, podded peas are on the menu at Milkwood Farm this week. Michael sowed them as a spring crop that would both improve the soil and give a yield, before we plant our summer veggies of capsicum, tomato, eggplant and root crops. They are one of my favorite veggies…
Field peas a-rising
Field peas growing amongst companions of vetch and wild rocket
Market garden intern Jeremy doing a pick
Many hands make many peas…
We’re eating these peas in soups and stews – they’re little bursts of sweetness. The chooks and the worms and the pigs then eat up the empty pods quick smart – so everything ends up going back through the system in an ongoing cycle of renewal…
Anyone else growing peas this year? What are you doing with yours?
Mine never make it inside – the kids eat them all straight out of the garden!!
I will be planting my peas as soon as their garden bed is available – next Sunday hopefully. Our chooks or compost will get the pea pods too and the plants will be chopped into the soil at the end of the season. I can take or leave frozen peas but I love fresh ones, raw or cooked.
Could you tell me where you live please, and what sort of peas can be planted in November? Do you live somewhere that’s quite cool in Summer?
Hi, I’m in Ballan which is cold climate but it is quite late to be planting them. Still, worth a try.
Our favourite dressing in summer is home made mayo with lightly steamed (and cooled) peas and a bit of home grown garlic added. We love this with a potato salad that includes more peas. I also adore pea risotto with field peas, snow peas and fresh soy beans all coming from the garden.
yum. need more home-made mayo around here… might be our crew day off (kirsten cooks) project next week…
I grow 2 crops of peas every year. The first is planted on the 1st of February and the second is on the 1st of July. They can be dwarf, climbing podded peas or snow peas. They flower about 6-8 weeks after planting and grow on for about 4-5 months until either the frost kills the pod in winter or the oncoming summer heat stops them growing in November. I grow enough to freeze so that I have been able to eat peas every day of the week for the past 7 years. The best year was to freeze about… Read more »
Brings back memories of shelling peas with my grandparents almost 50 years ago.
Generally we only grow edible podded peas, because we have limited space and can’t get enough field peas to last very long. This year though we managed 4 harvests from those seeded in Autumn, but with our ‘two for me, one for the pot’ mentality and the littlies eating the pods before they’re ripe, there was still only enough for 4 small meals! Absolutely delicious though 🙂
Try climbing peas to make better use of the limited space you have. I like the purple pods because they produce taller vines and bigger peas in the pods while the telephone peas don’t usually produce quite as much.
Yeah these bush peas were specifically planted so we didn’t have to do trellising, as they were doubling as a quick-rotation green manure crop (which peas as benefits)… we do have plenty of climbing peas in, but they’re in another section of the garden 🙂
Hope Jeremy will grow some when he comes home!