Minding Your Peas and Cukes

As our farm changes, we reconsider what we will grow and how much of those things we will grow each year.  I know we both love our snow peas and we have a variety of snow peas we really appreciate.  It seems to like to get a start in the high tunnel and then it really takes off when we move the building off of the plants.  

So, we'll be planting snow peas this year.  I guess you could say we are...

Giving Peas a Chance

Young peas at the right, carrots at the left (mid May)

Peas are one of those crops that farms like ours don't often focus on.  The tomatoes, especially when you grow a range of heirlooms, are attractive and easy to talk about.  Lettuce has so many different varieties and they can look very different from one to the next.  If you live in Iowa, you typically have a place in your heart for sweet corn.

I have yet to see a session offered at a farming conference (such as PFI) that focused on growing peas, but we will happily talk about lettuce, tomatoes, squash and numerous other crops.

The reality is that peas do not typically provide high yields per row foot, but they do represent a fairly high cost in terms of labor during harvest.  If you're a small farm with limited resources, peas might not be worth the chance.  In our case, we like the bridge peas give us in late June and early July to the green beans.  But, the overlap between the two can certainly test one's picking patience.

We like to get the peas in the ground around April 30 and earlier if we start them in the high tunnel.  Ideally the four inch soil temperature in the mid-50's gives us good germination.  We focus on pod peas (snow) and stopped growing shell peas years ago.  The return on shelling peas was so low that we couldn't justify trying them any more.

Peas de Resistance

Trying to get a jump on trellising

All of our work having to do with peas is focused around the harvest.  I suppose, you could say this is true for all of our crops if you think about it.  But, we trellis our peas primarily to make the harvest easier and reduce our harvest time.  If we didn't trellis them, we could still get peas and the plants wouldn't suffer too much.  

If you've ever tried to harvest peas that weren't trellised well, you might be tempted to write a book about...

War and Peas

And, in fact, there is a kids book with that title by Michael Foreman.  You can listen to it here.

We've also had some issues with wind blowing some of the vines off of the trellising.

Two rows of peas with nowhere to go?

 

When the vines fall off or otherwise evade our trellis efforts, you could say we have an issue with...

Escapeas!

 

Our trellising technique when we grew as much as eight hundred row feet of peas was a bit of a project, but once it was done, it worked pretty well.  We started with cattle panels at the ends of our 200 foot rows.  This provided and anchor for the Hortnova fencing that ran the rest of the length of the row.  It also provided a barrier against the deer that occasionally like to taste our peas.  So, you could say that the cattle panels provide us with some...

Peas of Mind

Mammoth Melting Peas

 

We have found that the taller vining plants, such as the Mammoth Melting Pea actually prefers the cattle panels to the Hortnova fencing.  As a result, we actually provided cattle panels for the whole length of the row.  Since we put these on the outside rows, this also provided a barrier to the deer.

Blizzard, another pea variety, doesn't seem to care how it is trellised.  But, if the tellis is too loose and rolls over on itself it causes problems.  If you can't quite see how this might be an issue, we'd like you to....

Visualize Whirled Peas

These Blizzard pea plants want you to know that they do not endorse Rob's puns.

In any event, when we have a cooler June and July this provides a great situation for peas planted in the field.  During the years when that happened, we really brought in nice harvests.  Our very best year was 2015, when we brought in about 450 pounds of snow peas from 600 hundred row feet.

Which means we can talk a bit about...

Peas and Prosperity

Oregon Sugar Pod II - consistently reliable.

Our baseline for pea production is about 50 pounds for 100 row feet of peas.  That's what we expect if everything goes well.  And, most seasons, something goes wrong.  For example, in 2013, the Mammoth Melting seeds were not pure, so the peas they produced were not snow peas and did NOT taste good.  On the other hand, Oregon Sugar Pod II has been pretty consistent at 57 to 65 pounds per 100 feet.  The big issue with them are the...

Inner Peas
Well, we had gone so long without a pun, I had to get one in there.  Here's the deal.  Oregon Sugar Pod II is the most heat tolerant, shortest vine, standard snow pea we have grown.  But, unlike Blizzard, it likes to hold many of its peas inside the leaf canopy, which makes it a bit more difficult to harvest.

Spend time amongst the peas and you get to enjoy their flowers.

But, when you actually find that pod sitting deep in the vines, you get tempted to yell...

I Gotta Pea

If you are not in our CSA, then you might not have been pointed to this song by Brent Odom. 

Yes, yes, we know that this type of song is typical of a ten year old's sense of humor.  Therefore, it makes sense that Rob is posting it.

This reminds me of a person I met some time ago at a park.  She liked to sing the alphabet song while shelling peas.  She also had a small tank where she raised minnows for fishing.  Since her name was Ella, she taught us to sing the alphabet song this way.  ABCDEFGHIJK... 

Ella Minnow Pea

I suppose many of you are in some amount of pain by now, so I will get back to talking about our peas. 

Golden Sweet Peas - easier to pick and great taste.

Golden Sweet Peas like the cooler weather and very much prefer to be trellised well.  In most production years, we didn't give them the full attention they deserved but they have a great taste raw or cooked.  The yellow-green color makes the peas stand out from the vines and make it easier to pick.  But, many people aren't sure if the peas are good because the pale color looks a bit anemic. 

Peas Believe Me

Golden Sweet Peas are very tasty.  Rob does not typically eat raw veggies in the field, but he'll make an exception for these.  In fact, he'll eat any one of thes varieties of snow peas we have grown raw or cooked and can tell you that each has their own taste.  The Blizzard and Golden Sweet Peas have the most tender pods of the batch.  Blizzard can be very sweet tasting and Golden Sweet is in between Blizzard and a standard snow pea (Oregon Sugar Pod) for taste.  Mammoth Melting is fine raw but even better in stir fries or steamed since it has a pod that can be a bit tougher.

Hopefully we'll have a good year with our pea crop.  If we do, we might have some available for YOU.  If you buy more than you would need for one meal, you can have extra.  Then one night you can go home, find some leftovers - just a little of this and that - to have...

A Peas Meal.
 

For the longest time we had a tagline that was, of course, pun based.

Minding Your Peas and Cukes

I think it was actually fairly popular.  We gauge such things by the volume of the collective groaning heard from those who are reading it. 

One time, I was out weeding between the carrots and peas and had one of those moments that occurs every so often in the country where there is very little noise.  I guess you could say I had some 

Peas and Quiet

I also noted that this must be a very good year for peas since there were some vining into adjacent bell pepper plants.  If those vines choke out the bell peppers but result in top quality peas, you might say we won the

No Bell Peas Prize

The Blizzard peas STILL do not endorse Rob's puns

In order to appease you (see what I did there?  You did... ups, sorry), we will actually provide you with some interesting information. After all, I've been told I'm full of it.

For example, we do not actually grow peas and peppers in the same area, so happily, we should not have pea vines choking out our peppers.  Needless to say, the trellising helps contain the pea vines somewhat.  But, since the peas grow vertical, they tend to have a shade zone.  Peppers like their sun, so a shade zone might not be helpful to our bell peppers.  As a result, we interplant bush beans with peppers and we have tried some clover as well.

I was just thinking.  Most people seem to like baby animals.  How about 'baby' plants?  Would you find young pea plants to be...

A pea ling?

Ahem.  Moving on.

Since this is supposed to be a post about peas AND cukes, we'd like you to know that the cukes...

Look Just Vine to Us!

Lovely coverage and texture.. soon everyone will decorate with them!

In the picture above, the plants were only just started producing, but the vines were really covering ground.  The season for cucumber yoga had begun!  We do not trellis our cucumbers, which means Rob had to do a fair amount of contorting to pick cucumbers and not destroy vines or fruit in the process.  In short, it can be a fair amount of exercise. 

And, in case you didn't know, peas can get you exercise as well.  We are considering marketing a new hot drink that combines peas and coffee.  You exercise while drinking it (maybe doing cucumber yoga?).  I think we'll call it...

Pea Lattes!

You're welcome.  And have a fine day - assuming you survived this blog post.