Experimenting with peas

General tips / questions on seeding & planting

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Primrose
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My existing row of sugar snaps will shortly be finished and ripped up. I have an almost full packet of dried soup peas in the cupboard and want to experiment with them since they're so much cheaper than commercial pea packets from garden centres asnd have been excellent for growing tasty pea shoots.

I know in culinary terms they are effectively soup type or "mushy peas" if grown to fill term but if I only grow them until the pods are barely swelling, will I be able to harvest and eat them as a reasonable mangetout or sugar snap substitute?

I like to experimentand and wonder if anybody has tried growing them in this way and what might be the disadvantages?
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I'm growing Pease that I dried last Autumn they are about a week or so from having nice fat pods I would tell you how they taste but I don't think any will see a pan
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Primrose
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I think that!s a common problem with growing peas Robo !
Westi
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Can only give it an experiment then Primrose now you've put it on here!

I would think taken as mange tout would be certainly doable as they all look similar at that stage, but I would expect your window of opportunity for proper peas is slim before they become too starchy, but - will it be? The starchiness comes to all the peas if missed when picking so all I can say is good luck & make sure you feed back as will be a very economical way for us to grow loads of peas next year.
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Primrose
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Yes, that's what I thought on the economy front, and yes I agree, the pods would need to be inspected daily and picked very
promptly before thickening up otherwise they would probably become inedible. Easier to do in a garden plot where yiu can pop out every day than on an allotment you can only visit a couple of times a week where I imagine two days of rapid growth might push them too far.
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Johnboy
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Hi Primrose,
You can sow Peas up to the end of the month and about a couple of weeks later and still get a perfectly good late crop. I am toying with doing just that as I have enought seed left over for a thirty foot row and next year all the seed will be new. At the latter part of the year they have a tendency to mature quickly it maybe that this row may well be mainly for seed. Certainly give thes shop dried peas a go because if you don't you will never know how good or bad they are. You may well be onto a winner!
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Primrose
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Thanks Johnboy. I will give it a try and see what happens. With very little expense it will only be my labour that is wasted and as you say, sometimes trying something different can produce surprising results. Certainly if the experiment is successful I will never pay full price for garden centre purchased packets of mangetouts or sugar snaps again if early harvesting of dried soup pea pods produces a similar product ! It may be that the weather turns against me but worth a try instead of waiting until next season.
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Why don't you save your own seed from all your pea varieties? I've been growing two varieties of tall peas, plus a mangetout and green shaft for years at no cost at all. Better to grow good varieties that you like.

It is so easy to save seed from peas and beans in particular. Select strong plants and only save seed from the best nice full pods. Dry them well and keep cool and dry for sowing next year.

Not saying you shouldn't try the marrow fats, they might be nice but at least if you save your own you know what you're growing.
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Primrose
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If I had sufficient space to grow enough peas a I would do this but my garden plot is very limited in size and I can only grow one short row, so the peas ai do grow are more of a treat than a staple food and holding some back for seed would reduce ever further the number available for eating.
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Have you tried growing taller ones up a circle of canes with netting round it? They take very little room up and are easy to protect from birds. I've three of these for the Radeo, Robinson and Mangetout and then grow a row or two of the Greenshaft. You don't need to save many pods to have enough for the tall peas and mangetout and I buy a packet of Greenshaft if I run out. There are only two of us at home now so I'm trying to grow less of most things, but still have enough to put a few in the freezer. I'll try and take a photo if it stops raining.
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Johnboy
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Hi Primroes and PP,
Saving your own pea seeds is probably the easiest of seeds to save. I select pods down the row, whilst growing, and tie some red wool to then and I then pick and use the others for eating and leave the row to die down naturally and when all the foliage is totally brown I pull up the plants and thoroughly dry them and place them in net bags and the peas normally fall out of the pods and collect in the bottom of the net bag. What could be easier!
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Primrose
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An update on my experimental sowing of dried soup peas to try and get a pea crop. . The plants are now nearly two feet tall, growing well and are at the stage where I would expect to see some flowers starting to appear. However, to date nothing has happened. Either I!m still a little early in my expectations or the plants for some reason, are going to be blind and no flowers are going to appear.

I will continue to be patient and can still use the plants to harvest them them for salad pea shoots but I can't think of any reason why they would not necessarily flower. If the peas had been treated in some way to make them fit for human consumption in soups I would have thought that this would have prevented them from possibly germinating and sprouting in the first place.
So for the time being, the experiment continues.
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Primrose
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Further update. I was obviously too impatient. I now have flowers appearing on my dried soup pea plants so at least they're not going to come up blind which is what I half feared. . However they do seem to prefer lower temperatures so probably wont get a huge crop. Still at least it proves they will "do the business" so will sow them for a cheaper crop of mange tout or sugar snap peas next spring.
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Primrose
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I,ve had two small pickings to eat as mange touts since last posting but sadly the plants have been badly affected by mildew and I pulled them all out this morning. Still it has proved that these soup peas will indeed produce a crop. I suspect that for the best benefits they should be sown as an early crop. I,m not an expert pea grower but I always get a bigger, healthier crop from a spring sowing and soup peas would seem to prove this rule .

Nthe wuality of the pods didn,t seem to be affected by the mildew. It was only the leaves which were affected and the plants still had flowers on them but they looked awful and were located next to my courgettes which are also developing the same complaint so decided it was time to have them out. Does mildew spread from one plant to another I wonder or do they all develop it individually? . I notice some of my perennials has also been similarly affected.
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