How To Successfully Grow Lots Of Sweet Peas

     Like carrots, my wife and I have grown peas every year and we grow enough to freeze and we enjoy them throughout the whole winter.  Most people buy peas by the packet, maybe two packets, which only have enough peas to grow maybe 3 single rows and this will provide peas for only 3 or 4 meals.  My wife and I are very serious when it comes to buying peas.  We have bought anywhere from 2 to 10 pounds of peas.  A $20 bill will buy a lot of peas.  Our favorite brand is "Perfection".  The second favorite is "Victoria", and 3rd is "Green Arrow".  But over the many years, both "Perfection" and "Victoria" were grown the most.
     Peas are very healthy for you.  They have Vitamin A, B-complex and C.  They also have Iron and Potassium.  Peas also have a large amount of pectin and it is a good source of Fiber. Eating Peas will prevent wrinkles from forming on your face, and it will prevent stomach Cancer and it fights against Alzheimers.
     There are two ways to grow peas that will give you all the peas you want.  Dig up the ground and break the soil up fine.  Add manure and Phosphorus, sprinkling this on the soil.  Then you turn it over with the shovel to mix it in.  This area you are planting peas is 10 to 20 feet long and about 3 or 4 feet wide.  You mark your pea patch with 4 wooden stakes, one on each corner.  Then you use a hoe and make a furrow the whole length of your pea patch.  Then you put a second furrow next to the first one, and a 3rd furrow next to the 2nd one.  If you still have enough room, do a 4th furrow.  If you have room in your garden, make 2 or more of these pea patches.  My wife and I would have at least 3 pea patches that were 4 by 20 feet.  If you say:  "That is a lot of peas!", I would say you're right.  Then you turn on your water hose a little bit with no nozzle and put water in each furrow to get them all wet.  I do this to one patch at a time.  I water the furrows, plant my seed, then I use the back side of the rake (not the forks) to cover up my peas.  Then I use the back side of the rake and tamp the whole pea patch.  Then you do the 2nd patch the same way you did the first patch and so on.
     The next day, you turn on your sprinkler, or you can do this by hand with a spray nozzle, and you water your pea patch so it is nice and wet.  You can add grass clippings to all your patches until you cannot see the soil.  This will keep the moisture in and this will also keep out most of the weeds.  The object of having 3 or 4 rows of peas next to each other, is the peas will grow all over each other like as if they are having a party, and you will have 4 times more peas than what you would get in a single row.
     You will see pea pods starting to form about a week after the white flowers appear on the plants.  When the pods become nice and plump, then you pick the plum peas about every other day.  When a plant is done producing peas, it will die and dry up.
     There is a 2nd way that peas can be planted with good results.  We bought some metal fence post that we use every year.  We pound these into the ground every 3 or 4 feet, then we tie a 4-foot wire fence with small squares to the fence posts.  We make a furrow on each side of the fence the full length of the fence.  Then you put water in the furrows, add some manure, plant your seed and cover it up, and tamp it, each row with the rake.  When the peas begin to grow, they will climb the fence.  Each fence row is about 3 feet distance from each other and they are 10 to 20 feet long.  When I plant peas this way, I plant the peas thicker than I do with the 4-row method.  I also put manure on the ground and then I cover it with grass clippings after it has been watered real good.  Some weeds still manage to grow through the grass clippings, and if they do, then you just pull them out.
      A friend of mine had a nice pea patch and after a couple of pickings he went on vacation for a week. His neighbor asked if they could come over to pick peas while they were gone. When they came home they discovered that all the pea plants had been pulled out of the ground and they were mad. When they asked the neighbor about it, they said they always pulled the plants after the second picking and they felt that they were doing them a favor. Remember, when growing peas you can get 6 to 8 pickings. If you water the peas after each picking you could extend the pickings up to ten or more times. But do not pull the plants after the first or second picking, because there will be a lot of peas yet to come.
     Most of all, have fun in growing your own peas, and may the eating of all these peas give you much joy and self-satisfaction. By the way for the year of 2014 we harvested over 70 cups of peas.

     Please read my articles on " How to grow lots of Carrots ", and " Remedies for a better Garden ".