Kitchen Garden Forum

Our second lot of peas, 'Cavalier', which usually do so well, have just given up the ghost after just producing a few peas. They have gone yellow, papery and are drying up. Very odd indeed. They look as if they are in dire need of water but the ground is still quite damp. 'Hurst Greenshaft' has done much better but nothing like as well as last year.

We grow the same number of rows of peas every year and last year's frozen harvest lasted us until well into this summer, in fact, right until we started on the new peas, but this year we have frozen about a quarter of that! Presumably, it's the cold, dry weather we had in spring.

I don't know anyone who's had a decent pea harvest this year. On top of the poor yields mine also don't have the flavour they should, presumably the lack of sunshine.

There's always next year and gardeners are nothing if not optimists.

usually grow 2 x 30' double rows of early onward & 3 x 30' double rows of greenshaft. absolutely pathetic harvest. usually get at least 2 carrier bags per row but in total only 1.5 bags from the whole lot. germination was erratic & poor with at least 3 sowings to gap up. never had a problem with germination in over 35 years until now thankfully some of last years still in the freezer.

Same here. Not a germination issue as I raised them in rootrainers. Just premature death with yellow foliage that I put down to wet rather than cold. OK last year when it was colder but drier.

If the mice, pigeons & dogs would leave them alone I would comment on this post!

Westi

I'm glad other people have had the same problems with their peas. My Robinson peas which are usually 6 ft tall have set peas at 3 ft, turned yellow and given up the ghost. I was wondering what I had done (or not done) to upset them. What I can't understand is why the mangetout peas have done so wonderfully well they have grown so high I have to stand on a chair to pick them, and they have an amazing crop.

This is all very strange because Peas here have been a real success this year with varieties that are listed at 3ft have grown to almost 6ft and have given very good yields. With Clive's Radeo Peas being well over 8ft and 9ft plus in places with masses of peas thankfully as I still have yet to have a runner bean that has matured sufficiently to pick!
JB.

My climbing peas did both:
- grew to around 5 foot high, produced quite a good crop of peas,
- then turned pale -> white.

I give up this year on peas. Eating and sweet peas. But we have been to Harlow Carr today and their sweet peas were to die for. They were autumn sown ones and had seaweed feed on them. So we are going down that route this autumn. I think we had two handfulls of peas to eat.