Royal Snow Pea Seed

Scientific name

Pisum sativum

Soil and season

Peas are a cool-season crop; plants pick most heavily in spring, and summer pickings are lighter. Give them fertile ground with a pH of about 6.5–6.8, raising the pH with ground limestone or wood ash, ideally the fall before planting.

Inoculant

Coating the seed with a pea/vetch rhizobium inoculant before sowing helps the roots form nitrogen-fixing nodules, which leads to bigger plants and better yields and leaves nitrogen in the soil.

Days to maturity

Counted from direct sowing.

Spring sowing

Sow as early in spring as the ground can be worked, 1/2–1" deep with seeds 1 1/2–2" apart, in rows 18–36" apart. Thinning is not needed.

Support

Varieties under about 3 feet can be grown without support in rows 12–18" apart. Taller ones need a trellis net or wire fence, which keeps vines upright, easier to pick and off wet ground. Put it up when you sow, with the bottom just above the seedlings, and allow 4–6 feet between trellised rows.

Fall crop

Choose early, powdery mildew-resistant varieties that still flower as days shorten, and sow about two months before the first frost. Keep the seedbed moist so the seed sprouts well in warm soil.

Seeding rate

At 25 seeds per foot in rows 24" apart: about 1 lb. per 80 ft., 13 lb. per 1,000 ft. and roughly 272 lb. per acre.

Disease

Root rots (Fusarium and Aphanomyces) yellow the plants from the base upward; prevent them with well-drained soil and at least three years between legume crops. Powdery mildew covers leaves and pods with white growth in hot weather, so choose resistant varieties for late plantings.

Harvest

Pick shelling peas once the peas fill out the pods, snap peas when the pods are plump and crisp, and snow peas while the pods are flat and the peas are still small.

Treated seed

Fungicide-treated seed rots less often in long spells of cold, wet weather. Treated seed is labeled as such in the product name.

Packet

250 seeds.

Seeds per lb.

About 1,700 on average.