Best sugar snap pea?

[Seven Bends]

Google seems to be telling me that Manoa Sugar Pea is a snow pea variety rather than a sugar snap pea. Is that accurate?

[Mark_Thompson]

Ah, like I said, no expert here, but yes I think you are correct. Sorry about that.

But still up for grabs if anyone is interested.

[Tormato]

Ah, like I said, no expert here, but yes I think you are correct. Sorry about that.

But still up for grabs if anyone is interested.

If no one else jumps in, I'll take them. I'll wait awhile, first.

[JRinPA]

@Seven Bends Some years they do get an early zap of frost. I drape them with old AG19 that night, and try to remember to remove it when it warms back up. That may extend the season by 3-4 weeks depending on the weather. Usually we well get a first touch of frost in early Oct, then it might not get cold again for a few weeks. I think they are the best tasting peas of of the year when they are frost kissed. But when it gets too cold and the flowers freeze, then it is the beginning of the end. Though I have lost a round of flowers, but had flowers succeed the next week. A good hard freeze will hurt the pods themselves and they'd need to be picked and used quickly.

Make sure it is good sunny spot in the fall, as said, there won't be overhead sun for ripening like late May/June. Cascadia is a good one, Sugar Sprint should be too. Sugar sprint is up again next year anyway, since I just bought a 5lb bag a year back.

I'm not sure where the dividing line is between a snap pea and a snow pea. I grow them both the same way. They only difference I really see is a snow pea starts out skinny and you can see the peas develop, while a snap pea starts out with a thicker shell, so you can't see the peas until they are fatter. When mature they seem about the same.

This year I did not cover the fall peas at all, not enough free time. And I only did one big row. I just left a note for everyone at the garden to pick what they want when they are ready enough. I picked three times myself in October/Nov, the last time before a predicted freeze. A week or so later the ones that were left were going bad, mealy from being frozen, and I felt like I should have just picked every last one regardless of maturity. But you never know around here.

Like this last couple months, it has been seasonably cool/cold but we haven't had any really cold snaps, no snow cover at all. This week it is getting down to the low 20s at night, a few nights in a row. This fall I tried a bunch of rows of red beets, various times planted mid July - mid Sept, and locations, some covered with AG19 sheets, some not. Basically something came out, I put beets or daikon in. The July plantings were excellent and produced huge beets that came out maybe late Oct when the voles started helping to thin them. With this forecast of 10 below freezing I just picked the other rows a couple days ago, and the rows that have been covered for 2 months had small to very small beats, but beautiful tops. I packed them into a 12qt pot and cooked it all down. Whereas the uncovered beds, they were much rougher and the beets themselves are rough on top, and weren't worth picking anymore. Also got carrots, lettuce, and spinach too. If the temp is still going into the 40s most days, and dipping below freezing just for a few hours a night, covering the fall crops with something like AG19 will really help extend the season here.

[Seven Bends]

@Mark_Thompson Definitely no need to apologize; it's very kind of you to offer the seeds here! I was just asking because I was curious about what kind of pea it is and the info I found on Google wasn't totally clear to me. Like @JRinPA said, the dividing line between snap and snow pea is kind of ambiguous. I've read that mainly it's a matter of snap peas having thicker pod walls. It seems to me that snap peas also are a little sweeter than snow peas, but maybe that's just due to the particular snow peas I've grown.

[WoodSprite]

I've only been growing peas (snap, shell & snow) for a few years. For snaps, I grew Cascadia (from Pinetree Garden Seeds) for those years and liked them a lot although they did get strings when I let them get too big. The plants grew taller (3-1/2 to 4 feet tall) than I expected from what I had read (2-1/2 to 3 feet tall).

I love to compare different varieties of things so this past season, in addition to Cascadia, I also grew Sugar Snap (from Burpee) and Super Sugar Snap (from Pinetree Garden Seeds). Of all of them, Sugar Snap was the most productive and my favorite to snack on when I was in the garden. I also liked that Sugar Snap was the tallest of the three.

With that limited amount of experience, if I had to pick only one to grow again, it would be Sugar Snap. Luckily I don't have to make that choice. Next year I will be growing Cascadia, Sugar Snap, Sugar Ann (from Johnny's Selected Seeds).

As far as snap verses snow peas, snow peas are their own "thing" and have comparatively flatter pods. Snap peas were developed from a cross of snow peas and shell peas and have a comparatively rounder pod. I had grown snow peas for a few years but didn't like them as much as snap peas and shell peas so I didn't grow any snow peas this year and probably won't again. I much prefer snap peas for their flavor and juiciness.

I'm in the center of Pennsylvania, zone 6a.

[bower]

The standard shelling pea has a gene for 'parchment' in the pod. This makes the pod inedible. Snow peas have one gene that blocks the formation of parchment, and snap peas have that gene and another one that do the same. Why they are thicker, I'm not sure, but it could just be that the available varieties were bred for thicker pods to accentuate the virtue of a parchment free pod.
I've been trialing peas that are dried for the winter, like beans, and the different investment in pod structure is interesting. A couple of really late varieties with deluxe thick pods, seem to be designed to survive frost and so on for that late crop. And contrast others with pods so thin, the peas do sometimes burst out of them. Many roads to success as a pea!

[Seven Bends]

@WoodSprite, thanks for reporting your snap pea experiences. That's very helpful information. I'm planning to do a comparison myself this spring, so last night I ordered Sugar Snap and Sugar Ann from Gurney's and Sugar Sprint from Harris. I plan to look for Super Sugar Snap and/or Cascadia on store racks next month. I really only have room to try two varieties, but where's the fun in that?

[Seven Bends]

@Bower, I'm curious about how the anti-parchment genes in snap peas work. I grew Sugar Daddy snap peas and ended up with peas that all had completely inedible pods, even when young. The seeds were from Burpee, and many other reviewers reported the same problem. It's not restricted to Sugar Daddy; I saw the same thing in reading reviews of some of the other, newer snap pea varieties. Are those genes particularly unstable/difficult? If a snap pea has one but not both of the anti-parchment genes, what happens? Do you possibly get pea pods that are edible when young but inedible when mature?

[bower]

@Seven Bends, IDK about mutation rates. I know that parchment is genetically dominant, both of the 'anti-parchment' genes are recessive. So any cross occurring in the field with a shelly pea would give you a heterozygous pea in which the parchment gene would be expressed.
Peas are said to have only about 1% outcrossing iirc. But that would surely depend to some extent on the insect community in the field, although they normally self pollinate even before the flowers open. It may be possible that environmental conditions play a part in how early and how well they do self pollinate, in which case your outcrossing rate might go up, if the shelly vs snap peas growing for seed are close to one another.
But it is harder to imagine how that would affect the whole seed crop.
It is true BTW that almost any pea including those with parchment has an edible pod when very young. At least, I have munched on some that were not full of parchment yet. Maybe at a very early stage.
I had the same experience one year with snap peas that turned out to be inedible. Definitely at least one gene for anti-parchment was missing.

[bower]

Well @Seven Bends my curiosity got the best of me, I had to find out whether mutations are common enough to explain the inedible snaps... it may be so!

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-019-0480-1
"The pea genome shows the highest whole-genome mutation rate among the Leguminosae"

"Different lines of evidence suggested that the pea genome is evolving at a faster
pace than other investigated Leguminosae genomes, potentially through
transposon-mediated unequal recombination giving rise to gain or loss of genes,
or ectopic double-strand break repair."

https://link.springer.com/article/10.10 ... 011-0058-9
This study of mutation rate gives figures that don't mean much to me since I have no other mutation rates to compare.
But, their study involving single seed descent found a rate of one mutation in the tenth generation. That is not
a lot of generations.

Also found the story of Sugar Snap really interesting. It was a cross between Mammoth Snow Pea and a 1952 shelling pea mutant with
thick walls and tight pods. (It was not the first snap pea, but the first really commercially successful one. So there were other similar mutants around in the 19th century according to what I read.)
The comment here about Sugar Snap reverse mutants becoming more common,
throwing a lot of snow peas instead, is certainly interesting from the pov that mutations could account for changes to the expected snap peas.
https://www.seattleurbanfarmco.com/blog ... 8fcb-h3fem

So I think your theory that mutations caused the problem gets a thumbs up, and it is probably not related to outcrossing.

[Tormato]

Another difference between snow and snap peas, beyond pod thickness, is that some snow peas become starchy very quickly as they mature, while snap peas generally stay sweet much longer. Some of the snow peas are basically dual purpose, used as snow peas when young and fresh, and as soup peas when dried.

I've heard that some people use wrinkled shelling and/or snap peas for soup. I've wondered how that tastes. My guess would be that it's more like (standard) yellow split peas than green split peas. Also, I don't recall ever seeing a smooth yellow soup pea in any seed catalog.

[Seven Bends]

@Bower, that podcast answered a lot of questions for me, thanks! The original Sugar Snap is a cross between a snow pea and a "tight-podded rogue," explained as a thick-walled pea with parchment. They said the poorly-maintained seed lines of the original Sugar Snap were producing a lot of snow pea plants. I assume the same thing is happening with poorly-maintained seed lines of Sugar Daddy and some other varieties, except that they're producing the "tight-podded rogue" parent instead of the snow pea parent. That explains the thick-podded, very sweet peas with completely inedible pods I got from my Sugar Daddy plants, and the abundant negative customer reviews from others.

They attributed the seed line problems to mutations, cross-pollination, and even producers dumping seed into the wrong bin. They said seed production requires constant rogueing, walking the fields to eliminate the incorrect plants and choose the best ones, and that producers are much less likely to do this for varieties after PVP has expired.

I wish I had known about their efforts with Johnny's to clean up the seed line before I bought seeds elsewhere. (Someone may have mentioned this up-thread, because I remember reading about it but didn't pay sufficient attention.) It was interesting to me that they (Magic Seeds, not Johnny's) fully expect and welcome the possibility that other seed producers will buy the cleaned-up seed from Johnny's and use it to produce their own stocks of seed for sale. Their goal was to restore the seed line to its former glory, not particularly to profit from it.

Sounds like someone needs to conduct a similar effort with some of the other varieties. @Gardadore mentioned problems with Sugar Daddy from Burpee's but not from Renee's, so maybe some vendors are being more careful than others.

[bower]

Another difference between snow and snap peas, beyond pod thickness, is that some snow peas become starchy very quickly as they mature, while snap peas generally stay sweet much longer. Some of the snow peas are basically dual purpose, used as snow peas when young and fresh, and as soup peas when dried.

I've heard that some people use wrinkled shelling and/or snap peas for soup. I've wondered how that tastes. My guess would be that it's more like (standard) yellow split peas than green split peas. Also, I don't recall ever seeing a smooth yellow soup pea in any seed catalog.

I read that wrinkled seed indicates sugars vs smooth seed indicates starch. I've heard people say that shelly peas don't often make good soup peas, but I haven't tried eating those wrinkled peas for cooking, so I don't really know why. Nobody described the experience...
One thing I noticed in a crossed pea I grew this year, the seed coat may be white or greenish or brown, while the inside is a yellow pea. I think the 'split peas' we buy in the store must be skinned.
Here is a smooth yellow soup pea : sold in bulk.
https://www.meridianseeds.com/bulk-seed ... -pea-seed/
Here's another one, by the packet:
https://www.annapolisseeds.com/product-p/151.htm

[jmsieglaff]

Late to the party here, but another vote for Super Sugar Snap! A few years ago out of laziness, I realized they put on a second flush of flowers if it's not too hot, about 1/2 to 2/3 amount of the first harvest.

[Tormato]

Another difference between snow and snap peas, beyond pod thickness, is that some snow peas become starchy very quickly as they mature, while snap peas generally stay sweet much longer. Some of the snow peas are basically dual purpose, used as snow peas when young and fresh, and as soup peas when dried.

I've heard that some people use wrinkled shelling and/or snap peas for soup. I've wondered how that tastes. My guess would be that it's more like (standard) yellow split peas than green split peas. Also, I don't recall ever seeing a smooth yellow soup pea in any seed catalog.

I read that wrinkled seed indicates sugars vs smooth seed indicates starch. I've heard people say that shelly peas don't often make good soup peas, but I haven't tried eating those wrinkled peas for cooking, so I don't really know why. Nobody described the experience...
One thing I noticed in a crossed pea I grew this year, the seed coat may be white or greenish or brown, while the inside is a yellow pea. I think the 'split peas' we buy in the store must be skinned.
Here is a smooth yellow soup pea : sold in bulk.
https://www.meridianseeds.com/bulk-seed ... -pea-seed/
Here's another one, by the packet:
https://www.annapolisseeds.com/product-p/151.htm

Split peas. green or yellow are skinned, like red lentils.

I never thought to look for yellow varieties in bulk (for large farm operations). I have a local ethic market in town, that serves the Polish, Lithuanian, and Ukrainian populations. They once carried several imported dry legume seeds, most with an added label (in English) from Brooklyn Imports. About a decade ago I picked up some yellow soup peas, unsplit, and with about half of the hulls removed. They seem to have discontinued almost all of those legumes, likely due to the immigrants assimilating to our American ways of convenience. I stop in just before Easter, which will likely be my next visit, and a few other times each year.

[Seven Bends]

What's your favorite "sugar snap" type of pea? I'd appreciate any recommendations, and especially for varieties that might do well in northern Virginia, where high heat arrives early, sometimes not long at all after last frost. So, heat tolerance or early maturity are pluses.

Seeing @karstopography's post about fall/winter peas reminded me that I didn't post any results of my spring pea planting. My mom had an urgent health problem and had to be hospitalized right around pea harvest time (she's fine now), so things became kind of hectic then.

I purchased:
Sugar Snap from Gurney (2022)
Super Sugar Snap from Burpee (2022)
Cascadia from Burpee (2022)
Sugar Ann from Gurney (2022)
Sugar Sprint from Harris (2021)
Green Arrow (English pea) from Little Shop of Seeds (2021)

I only had room for one row of peas, so I ended up planting Sugar Snap, Super Sugar Snap, Cascadia, and Green Arrow on 3/15, about 3 row feet of each, except only about 2 row feet of Cascadia. I used pea inoculant at planting. Ideally peas should be planted by late February or very early March here, but the soil is always too wet and the weather usually too poor to allow that. I had hoped to try germinating them in a rain gutter or similar to get a head start, but I had trouble finding rain gutter at a reasonable price and bailed on that project.

The Gurney Sugar Snaps were the first to emerge, with a few appearing on 3/25. Most germination was complete by 3/30, with very good germination on all varieties except Cascadia, which was sparse.

Something gnawed on all the plants from emergence until I finally realized what was happening and put row cover on some of them on 4/16. No idea what critter it was. Every leaf on every plant was gnawed back halfway or more, leaving the stem and stubby leaf parts. For awhile I just thought the plants weren't growing very fast, and it wasn't until I knelt down and really looked that I realized there was a buffet going on. I only had enough row cover for about half the planting, so I covered the Sugar Snaps and Super Sugar Snaps. I didn't trellis anything (no time).

By 5/5, the peas under the row cover were about a foot tall and beautiful; the ones not under the row cover were only about 3" tall. I assume there was still some feasting going on outside the row cover. That stopped soon after and the plants finally started to grow.

By 5/26, all the pea plants were in full bloom, with some little peas up to an inch long. The first to mature was Super Sugar Snap. I picked my first one on 5/29 and about ten of them on 5/30. On 5/31, the temperature shot up to 94F, making the peas very unhappy. This happens pretty much every year. I picked a handful of peas that day, mainly Super Sugar Snap, plus the first Cascadia. Finally on 6/4 I got my first decent harvest, about 1.75 pounds, mainly Sugar Snap and Super Sugar Snap, with only a handful of Cascadia. The Cascadia plants couldn't survive the heat and started dying one by one. The Green Arrow plants had decent-sized pods but they were mostly curled and misshapen, probably due to heat. On 6/8 I picked about 2 pounds of snap peas and 1 pound of Green Arrow. I continued harvesting smaller quantities for another week or two without recording amounts, then pulled the plants around 6/20.

Super Sugar Snap and Sugar Snap were the clear winners. I found little difference between the two except that Super Sugar Snap was about 5 days earlier. (Seed packs say 70 DTM for both; I got 75 DTM for Super Sugar Snap and 80 DTM for Sugar Snap.) Taste, production, pod size and plant health all seemed the same. Plants were huge and vigorous; I need to support them somehow next year. Cascadia couldn't take the heat, though maybe it would have done better if not for the animal damage. I don't plan to try it again. Green Arrow was delicious but suffered in the heat, produced only moderately, and about half the pods were weirdly shaped. I've had better success with Wando in past years, so I'll return to that for an English pea.

Thanks again to everyone for your recommendations and advice. I hope to try Sugar Ann and Sugar Sprint next spring.

[WoodSprite]

Thanks for your report, @Seven Bends.

This year I grew the 3 varieties that I previously mentioned.

In order of first harvest they were: Sugar Ann (Johnny's Selected Seeds), Sugar Snap (Burpee), Cascadia (Pinetree Garden Seeds).

In order of best flavor they were: Sugar Snap, Cascadia, Sugar Ann.

I haven't looked at my numbers for harvest yet so can't compare there for sure but from memory I'm pretty sure Sugar Snap was the the best producer for me though I did have some vines that produced off-type pods that I did not count. Even if Sugar Ann had a huge harvest, I personally wouldn't grow it again because I did not like the flavor at all. I was very disappointed by that.

Next year I plan to grow just Sugar Snap and Cascadia.

[Seven Bends]

In order of best flavor they were: Sugar Snap, Cascadia, Sugar Ann.

I haven't looked at my numbers for harvest yet so can't compare there for sure but from memory I'm pretty sure Sugar Snap was the the best producer for me though I did have some vines that produced off-type pods that I did not count. Even if Sugar Ann had a huge harvest, I personally wouldn't grow it again because I did not like the flavor at all. I was very disappointed by that.

Was the Sugar Ann flavor disappointment mainly a lack of sweetness, or did they have an unpleasant flavor? Thanks for reporting your results; sounds like if I try Sugar Ann next spring, it might be good to just try a few plants and not a big patch. I have so many Sugar Snap and Super Sugar Snap seeds left, maybe I should just keep it simple and go with those.

I had one or two Sugar Snap vines that produced snow peas this spring, but most of the plants turned out right. Much better than the year almost all my Sugar Daddy plants produced English peas with inedible pods.

[karstopography]

Thanks for the positive review of Sugar Snap. It so happens the feedstore sells Sugar Snap in bulk so I picked up 1/4 pound plus this morning, I think it was $1.40, what a deal! That’s the smallest amount in bulk the feed store sells. Planting something like 100 later today, bed is ready, seeds are soaking. Still have over three ounces of seed remaining. Probably more than enough for the rest of 2022 and 2023 and then some.

Still plan on planting Sugar Daddy and Cascadia when those seeds come in from Botanical Interests. Those are in lesser quantities anyway. Sugar Daddy is supposed to be an “improved” Sugar Snap, with stringless pods, shorter vines, and improved disease resistance. Same breeder as Sugar Snap.