2017 Peas.

My peas have been useless thus far - next door plot has seen his suddenly kick off so I'm hoping some of my plantings will get going..

I thought my peas were doing quite well, till I saw yours potty !!
Like you I'm growing kelvedon wonder, lot of flowers and pods, but not nearly as good as yours.
Also trying early onwards and sugar pod ( mangetout) for the first time. Both looking good but not as far along as the kelvedon wonder.

I'm having some difficulty with the peas this year. I intended to grow enough Meteor to make a 1m row and a bucket on the flower garden, but it took me 3 sowings to achieve this as only about 1/3 of the seeds germinated. The earliest lot are just starting to produce pods and all of the plants are growing well.
I wanted to plant a trough of Douce Provence to hang on my front fence. This was an experiment as I wasn't sure the if trough (about 10l of compost) would hang on the fence or be too heavy, so I mixed in about 1/3 perlite to make it lighter. Whether it was the perlite or the fact that it was February (packet said sow Feb-May) or what I don't know, but only one seed germinated. I had to start again, and without the perlite and with a bit later sowing the 2nd lot germinated. They are rather scratty but they are just flowering now, standing on the floor because I don't want to damage the fence.
Then there were the Hurst Greenshaft. Normally I sow 5 to a pot and 10 pots produce 1m of row. The ones I grew at home were fine (almost 100% germination in each of 2 lots) and these are growing ok (but not spectacularly). The first lot I sowed in my friend's greenhouse completely failed to germinate. I can only think that in the very hot weather we had at the time they actually cooked. I had to resow the whole lot, which meant I was well behind with these and had to do the 2nd and 3rd sowings together, but there was very good germination with these.
The late peas (Terrain) have just germinated and look to be on about 80%, which is a lot better than last year when only about half appeared.
All the seeds (with the exception of the latest sowings of Hurst Greenshaft) were seeds which had been stored over winter. All were kept in the same box, so I can't think that it was a storage issue.

So overall, not the best year for peas here!

No flowers yet on my Telephone peas but all this rains making them look healthy. I had 100% germination from my saved seeds so I didn't need the spares some I gave to our daughter the rest are now growing up an apple tree.

My peas have been had by birds. I forgot to net the first lot and the second lot are also struggling.

However, my broad beans which I put in as green manure are superb.

My sugar snaps in the greenhouse are like those, but the outside ones are tiny yet

I've grown Douce Provence this year. No muck added to the soil when I started them off. However, I did add a bit to the soil just in front of part of the row, where I've planted lettuce. Those peas have grown taller and have produced more peas. So, I'm not sure any more about the conventional wisdom of not adding muck to legume beds.

I've not heard of not adding muck to legume beds. Beans are well known to like a lot of organic matter, hence the traditional bean trench idea.

Looking good Pots.

Legumes do use bacteria to help fix nitrogen, but this doesn't provide all the nitrogen that they need so you still need nitrogen in the bed (I read somewhere that soya beans fixed the most nitrogen). Bribing the bacteria to fix the nitrogen for them takes sugars and they divert up to 40% of their photosynthesis to this. This fixing stops once they start producing flowers as this takes their full energy output.

Here's a rant on the subject Fixation with Fixation – Jasons Jungle


No photos but my third sowing of Feltham First are swelling up. After 2 failed attempts I was rather heavy with the sowing and it's more like a solid mass of peas rather than rows.

The self saved Lord Leicester and Champion of England are romping up their wigwams, the self saved Serpette Guilloteau (saved them to see what colour flowers I got) are climbing thir bit of the fence and the telephone, although sown later, are scaling their own wigwam (and occasionally attempting to take over the other two) and will soon over take CoF and LL.

I planted Kelvedon Wonder from 2 different packets.

The ones from Lidl are now approaching 4 foot, and completely swamped the 2 ft netting i installed. The ones from some discount online seed place (i forget the name) are about 4 inches at the moment despite being planted at the same time, in the same location. They they were much slower to germinate which could explain some of the height difference...

In preparing the bed I did a couple of things differently this year. After riddling the old roots out as well as a base fertiliser I added some rock dust and specialist pelleted pea and bean feed. I am just hoping this has made the difference and I can repeat it next year.

My Sugar Snap 'Sugar Ann' have just about reached the top of the netting and are just starting to produce the first pods - i suspect in a weeks time we will have our first crop.

I'm trying Goldensweet mangetout for the first time. Since my space is limited it seemed to make sense to grow a pea that you can eat the whole thing. They are at the top of their 4' netting and plenty of pods, and - the main reason for my variety choice - I can see ALL the yellow pods easily against the green leaves. They taste very sweet and tender too. I've some Lord Leicester too, but they are only 4' tall so far, and flowering already.

I also in a silly moment put some dwarf peas in a hanging basket, thinking they would be attractive hanging down around the basket. Well, yes, except they've latched on to the basket chains and have just kept going skywards instead of trailing. They've pods on them though

My Oregon Sugar Pod mangetout are strangely not very tall so far (about 2 foot) but I've got a fair few flowers and pods already so I'm not too concerned.

Also growing pint sized peas - they weren't kidding! They are about 3-4 inches tall and already flowering.