Beans & peas
Sugar snap / snow peas
Direct late March, trellised, harvest June.
- Outside
- Direct late Mar, cold soil is fine
- Where
- Raised bed or in ground, on a trellis
- Sun
- Full sun
- Water
- Steady once flowers show
- Harvest
- Jun, three weeks of picking
Peas open the outdoor sowing season, going into cold March ground weeks before anything else dares. The entire crop lands in June, three weeks of picking, and then heat closes the door.
Growing
Direct sow in late March, or whenever the soil crumbles instead of smearing, an inch apart along a trellis set the same day; tall snaps reach six feet. No fertilizer, since peas make their own nitrogen; just steady water once flowers show. The June window is short and absolute, because the first real heat wave finishes the vines regardless of anyone's plans. Pull them by early July and hand the trellis space to a fall crop.
Varieties
Sugar Snap remains the tall original and the flavor standard; Cascadia keeps snap quality on a four-foot vine; Oregon Sugar Pod II covers the snow pea side.
Pests
Powdery mildew coats the vines as June heats up; an on-time March sowing outruns most of it, and Cascadia and Oregon Sugar Pod II carry resistance for the rest. Birds sometimes yank new sprouts, so a strip of row cover for the first two weeks ends that argument early.
In the kitchen
Snaps mostly get eaten at the trellis, standing up. Any that reach the kitchen want thirty seconds in a hot pan and nothing else.