Best Peas for Fall/Winter Peas?

[Tormahto]

The pea list has been updated in the MMMM 2022 non-tomatoes/peppers thread.

Karstopography, if you'd like any, send me a PM including a mailing address.

[karstopography]

IMG_3939.jpeg

Final pea harvest. I’m slowly figuring out how and when to do peas. Modest results this season, but so far I’ve relegated the peas to the low rent district of the garden. I’m upgrading that area every year.

I like Sabre shelling pea the best so far. Most of these are Wando. Lillian’s caseload were my least favorite.

I’m going to make a better effort next time around. Bigger, taller types with much upgraded supports and in better soil.

[GoDawgs]

I wish I could grow fall/winter peas here but it's a no-go. I'd have to plant them in mid August to have peas before the first killing frost. The soil's so hot they won't germinate. I have gotten them to pop up in the heat by soaking the shallow planting trench with water, sowing seed and then covering up the row with cardboard or soaked newspaper sections. Gotta remove the cover as soon as the first few seeds pop up or you'll have a leggy mess that will never recover. However once up they just can''t deal with the heat which lasts late into September.

One other thing I've noticed is that if I plant something in the spring and again in the fall (Octoberish), the fall-planted ones take a lot longer to mature which I ascribe to the shortening day lengths.

[karstopography]

My best timing for sowing I have so far determined is seeding around the winter solstice into early January. I haven’t had much success going in with seeding in November or early December. I don’t know how far into the winter I can continue to sow and have a successful crops. I might try to seed some in late January or early February next season.

The November into early December seeded ones seem to sit there and not do much. I might try again this fall going in even earlier, maybe late October.

I plan on playing around with various cultivars and timing and see what sticks

[GoDawgs]

My spring sowing usually occurs sometime between late February and the first week of March, depending on how wet the soil is and what the weather looks like. It varies year to year. By mid May I'm usually picking the last ones and pulling out the vines.

[karstopography]

https://brazoria.agrilife.org/files/201 ... _13_18.pdf

Our local planting calendar has the best times as 10/01-12/15 and then 01/15-03/01. I have only had some success with planting peas in between those windows.

Next fall the plan it to grow far less onions, less of some of the brassicas and less other cool season veggies and devote more and better space to peas.

[bower]

Just wanted to update that Golden Sweet is the hands down winner for late sown peas here.
These were planted around the time the garlic came out in early August.
I soaked and planted a random assortment of peas: Tai Chung, Calvert, Golden Sweet and Avalanche. None of the Avalanche showed up - maybe didn't like the heat at planting. The others came on and began to flower early October but were very slow to set any peas. Shown here first week of October.

2024-latepeas-october-586.JPG

Keeping in mind it was a warm fall and no frosts until mid or late October. There were many lovely flowers and finally, a few peas.
I only got a handful but the differences were really notable.
Tai Chung was the first to flower, however I only got a couple of peas. They were not as numerous in the mix, and easy to tell because of their pink flowers. They produced clean peas though, even though there was lots of dieback around them.
Calvert only produced one pea, and sadly it was covered in mildew. So it seems too susceptible to those die down late season diseases, and better for warm weather.
Golden Sweet was the clear winner. It set and grew maybe a dozen small pods before our first frost of -2C, which I picked before the frost. I also covered the plants for two frosts of -2C (28F) and put a couple of water containers on the ground to keep roots from freezing. They have now been through numerous frosty nights without any cover and shockingly, Golden Sweet is growing another handful of pods.
Bearing in mind it is now november, and our days are less than 10 hours of daylight, and many days with highs not reaching 50F/10C, I'm very impressed with Golden Sweet as a fall pea.

2024-latepeas-TaiChung-fewbutclean-892.JPG

2024-latepeas-Calvert-894.JPG

2024-latepeas-GoldenSweet-889.JPG

2024-latepeas-november-887.JPG

[JRinPA]

This is a chart, originally published in the '80s is one I've relied on for years and seems to still hold pretty true, at least for my area. It shows percentages of germination at various temps for a list of vegetables and the optimalgermination temp for each. The link is still alive after all this time.

https://tomclothier.hort.net/page11.html

Good bump.


That chart makes a case for starting everything at 77F with a few exceptions like spinach or celery. And it confirms something I have found - cauliflower is hard to germinate and those seed packs that say 90% germination of cauliflower are probably flat out lying.

[worth1]

I always liked the snow peas but they never make it into the house.

[GoDawgs]

That chart makes a case for starting everything at 77F with a few exceptions like spinach or celery. And it confirms something I have found - cauliflower is hard to germinate and those seed packs that say 90% germination of cauliflower are probably flat out lying.

That might be true if seeding cauli directly in ground. I've never tried that as I sow mine indoors in cups. Those come up in about four days.

[JRinPA]

For me broccoli and cabbage jump right up but cauliflower is poor germination. So that data fits my experience. This is all three in the same tray...