How to Grow PeasThere is nothing quite like peas fresh from the garden. Fresh peas certainly put cooked peas to shame. The sweet flavor of peas fresh from the pod cannot be duplicated and is not something you can find anywhere but a garden. Luckily it is not hard to learn how to grow peas and once you know how to plant peas, you will never spend money on buying frozen peas or canned peas from the store ever again! Fresh peas can easily be given to kids (who will react exactly as if you had just given them candy) and used in cooking. The best news about peas is that they do well in most types of weather. This means that your garden can produce fresh peas for three out of the year's four seasons!  When you start growing peas, you will need to choose the proper spot for your pea garden. The best place to grow peas is a garden that will get full sunlight and whose soil has a pH balance ranging from six to 6.8. A sloped garden that gets southern exposure is the best place to grow peas. You will want to make sure that the garden has adequate drainage because peas do not grow well in wet soil. You should also dig in compost before planting to make sure that your garden soil has the right texture. Don't worry about nitrogen additives. Peas can capture the nitrogen they need from the air around the plants. If the soil is very heavy, you can easily grow the peas in beds that are raised. Before you learn how to plant peas, you will want to choose the peas you want to plant: English (garden), Chinese (snow) or Snap peas. English peas only produce edible seeds. Chinese peas produce edible pods as well as edible seeds and snap peas do the same.
When you are ready grow peas and are ready to start planting, plant the seeds around an inch deep and keep them between three and four inches apart. Plant the peas in rows and the rows need to be about three feet away from each other. You will want to put in supports for the plants and make sure to guide the vines up the supports as they grow to a climbing length. One of the best parts in learning how to grow peas is learning that you can plant different crops of peas throughout the year. The heat resistant variety will grow well when planted a few weeks after the first snow of the year. Other varieties can be planted as early as ten weeks before the first frost. You can even have a separate crop area for peas that bloom in the fall months. Give your peas about a half an inch of water every week until they start to flower and then increase the amount of water to an inch every week. The peas will be ready to be picked around three weeks after the flowers start to appear. Now you have learned the basics of how to grow peas!
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