Grow Your Own Magazine

Hello everyone,
for the second year I have grown climbing peas. While the peas themselves are fat and juicy and Oooooo so sweet there's not many of them. The pods are huge and the plants look very well indeed. I planted them in a trough about 16" x 8" with about 10 plants in. Has anybody else found that climbing peas don't 'pea' as much as the shorter ones?
many thanks
Eden

I see that you grew the peas in a trough did you feed them because they would need feeding once they had used up the food in the compost a lot more foliage with climbing peas .
haveing said that you got more of a crop than i did i sowed twice but the pigeons had the lot

I'm confused - can a pea expert clarify something...

don't all peas climb??

yes they do, and at a variety of heights, usually about 3 ft? These ones are about 6 feet - whoppers! I did feed them but not as much as I should have. Sorry to hear the birds had your peas, my dog loves peas aswell so she guards them and as a reward I let her have a couple of pods!

The variety for climbing is ALDERMAN there is another but matures a lot earlier both very nice jacob

I am very pleased with my Alderman peas too - in fact the old man on the next plot who hasn't grown peas in years intends to give them a go next year after seeing mine! I'd definitely recommend them.

I'm growing Ne Plus ultra and Purple podded, both climbing peas (purple podded about 6 foot and Ultra about 7 foot.
Both are very productive heirloom varieties.

I am also growing Alderman but it isn't doing as well as the other two!

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My Majesty made for him a garden anew in order
to present to him vegetables and all beautiful flowers.- Offerings of Thutmose III to Amon-Ra (1500 BCE)

Hello Snadger, where can you buy these varieties from please? I'd like to give them a go next year, many thanks
Eden

I grow canoe and they get round 5'-6' feet climbing and always have sweet peas inside. I feed with comfrey liquid once at the start of flowering and again mid way through the season. I grow mine in tubs. Peas came from the organic catalogue.

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Best wishes
Andrewo
Harbinger of Rhubarb tales

I'm growing Alderman for the first time this year too - mine are only 18" high at the moment - think I was a bit late getting them in - I'm growing them up the sweetcorn in a sort of two sisters arrangement along with some runner beans - Can't wait to start cropping!!!

Hi Eden

I got my Ne Plus Ultra from Pennard Plants after seeing them growing on the Victorian Kitchen Garden DVD! The purple podded I bought from eBay last year and saved the seed from my own plants. They are much better this year from my own seed! I think Robinsons, the show people, have a purple podded pea also? The Alderman I bought from Kings seeds.

If you have a search through Google you will probably find quite a few outlets!

If its for next year, wait until the spring to order though, that way you have more chance of getting fresh seed!

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My Majesty made for him a garden anew in order
to present to him vegetables and all beautiful flowers.- Offerings of Thutmose III to Amon-Ra (1500 BCE)

Hi everyone, have been reading the posts on climbing peas. (Alderman)

We have grown them for the first time this year and we have been very disapointed with them so far.

We grew them up 2 A-frames, each cane aprox 1' apart and 18 canes per A-frame.

We sowed (direct) 3 peas per cane and 1 pea between each cane, making aprox 70 peas per A-frame, but only about 50-60% actually grew.

We re-sowed all the missed areas, not once but twice and still most failed.

And no I did not check beneath the missed areas to see what might be going on, never thought about it?

They were planted the same way as we do our other peas (kelvedon wonder) which are growing very well, except for the A-frames of course.

We staggered the A-frame planting to give us a longer cropping season.

They were surrounded with fleece for protection from the earlier colder weather that we had been getting, until they were about 1'-18" high.

And they have been given chicken pellets as they grew.

They are now about 7' tall have started flowering and peas are swelling on the vines.

Some of the plants have gone very pale in colour, so gave then a boost of rose fertiliser.

I read somewhere this would benefit them, can't remember why, maybe its for the extra potassium or something.

We are now waiting to pick the first of the peas to see what they are like, hope they taste better than they grew.

We had exactly the same problem with the ones sown at home in a very big re-cycling tub.

We sowed 13 in the tub and again only 50-60% grew, the misses were re-sown but there was little new growth from them.

They are about 5' tall and and have started flowering and producing peas.

They were treated the same as the ones on the lotte, surrounded by fleece for protection.

Wonder whether the weather is to blame!! its not mice, no damage to the fleece and no signs of burrowing or holes anywhere.

I'm flummaxed as to where we have gone wrong, it could be the seed peas of course, but will wait and see.

We have given some of them to 2 other fellow lotte holders and my son to grow, will see how theirs go/grow.

Hope they do better than ours.

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Vron, Tara & Harley. (The black beastie)

"The more people I meet, the more I like my Dogs"