A good year for peas :)

baymule

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digitS'

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Mary, you could almost drive to Bountiful Gardens. I used to drive through Willits on my way to San Fran ;).

The similarity between temperatures in one Bay Area season or another makes me wonder ... but, I don't want to give you an excuse for NOT growing peas, Mary! Still, I looked up San Francisco average monthly temperatures.

January, 2017 50.9°
July, 2016 59.3°

Steve, okay - I'll stop
 

lcertuche

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I use to grow sugar snaps but I could never grow enough because the Wildbunch and DH would eat them as fast as they grew so very few made it to the house.

I like peas because here you can grow them early and still have time for something else but I didn't get my fence up in time for spring peas. Maybe in the fall.

Everyone around here has been bragging on there peas this year. I thought about going to a U-pick farm but now I have the grands for a couple of weeks so it probably ain't gonna happen.
 

digitS'

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I don't try for any 2nd crop off the same vines. Mildew sets in and they aren't a high-production veggie to begin with ... not when one compares the square feet with some other things that might occupy that space.

Like green beans! My peas will be gone just as soon as I can justify pulling the vines. Bean seed will be planted in their place.

Then ... I will sow some pea seed by the end of July, during the hottest week of the year, here. As things cool off near the end of August, they begin to grow! Not as well as in the spring but I can have snow pea pods before October. Anyway, that has worked okay for several years. Yes, they can take a frost but it slows them down - a lot. I've also picked pods while they have been covered with frost. It's not that I've made a big commitment to them like the 3, 35' by 4' beds I had for peas one spring :rolleyes:. Just a little patch and, maybe, a little teepee trellis for them. Last year, I tried snap peas and they did just fine. However, we had a very unusual October 2016.

Steve
 

lcertuche

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I remember seeing where someone had cut off most of their bean vines(and disposing) one year and the vines grew back to a nice crop. Usually mine are really disease ridden by the time I've been picking for a while but I've often thought about trying this.
 

digitS'

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I'd never thought of that @lcertuche .

But then again, our pole beans produce into September and maybe to the first frosts. When I lived at an elevation about 500' higher, I could see that pole beans were a little risky in the shorter season there.

Okay, I've been tempted to suggest too many times since Carol Dee showed us her peas. (And, @Beekissed as well - click :))

Do you think that a low-sugar seed like snow peas would allow you to sow seed really early? If you have trouble growing peas because of a short period of spring-like weather, might sowing snow peas in, say, January work?

Steve
 

ninnymary

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I can't seem to grow sugar snap peas but one year I planted a six pack of snow peas in the fall. They got moldy and looked raggedy but they came back in the spring producing tons of snow peas. The problem is that I plant my tomatoes end of march on the same trellis those snow peas were on. So the peas had to go. :(

Mary
 

Ridgerunner

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My pole beans often have a rough time when the weather gets hot and dry but if I can keep them alive with enough water production really comes on when the weather breaks. The same thing happens with my tomatoes. Some of my best production with beans and tomatoes is after it cools off a bit. But if I have all the green beans canned that I need, I let some go to seed. I save seed for the next year plus use the dried beans.

I try to plant peas in mid-February to early March, depending mainly on how dry the ground is. Sometimes it's a struggle to get a time frame to plant. I normally prepare an area in the fall so I have minimal work to get the cool weather stuff in the ground. Sometimes that window is really short. If I can get a good stand from that planting I normally do pretty well, but sometimes I have to reseed, like this year. I plant "Little Marvels", mainly because I don't have to trellis them and I often have really good harvests with them. But not this year.
 
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