Friday
Spring snow peas. The best.
I have always grown them, but I never seemed to have enough. This year, I planted seven boxes of snow peas and boy howdy. We have peas! So good as a morning snack, in salads, stir fries, all the things. I had so many that I couldn’t keep up with them. Picking them is of utmost importance: once a pea plant has a mature pea on it’s vine, it will slow or stop producing. In essence, the pea plant gets a signal that it has accomplished it’s goal: reproduction.
So I got some help! My helpers picked as I made lunch and then we had a lovely kitchen garden lunch.
I will fertilize these with a bloom booster fish emulsion and hopefully we will get some more peas in a week or so. It was a joy to give the peas away to friends. I had considered blanching and freezing them, but it just isn’t as fun as sprinkling them around to my beloveds. And I can always grow more peas.
This past winter, I worked pretty hard to find some snow pea varieties that will do OK in the heat. Snow peas are fickle: they don’t generally like our hot summers and will stop production. I do grow a summertime snow pea that originated in India, but it isn’t as bountiful and tasty as the spring snow peas. I’ll post again once I know which varieties will make it – at least partially – through our southern summer.
