If you swear you can’t grow anything, have no space, no time, or any of the other gardening-averse excuses, just go plant some peas already. While a giant trellised row with automatic irrigation would be my preference, any neglected pot on a modestly sunny stoop will work and yield a perfect handful for stir-fry every few days with barely a look from you. Plant the right sweet varieties and you won’t even need to cook them. I’m lucky if the handful I grab daily makes it into the kitchen rather than becoming a walking snack in less than ten steps. With the speed at which the vines grow, you’ll gain a good dose of garden confidence even as a beginner and impress your garden-less neighbours as a plant mastermind.
I realized I had a few leftover sweet pea pod seeds (v. super sugar snap) saved from 2010 that badly needed renewing for later year crops. I should have done it a few years ago but they got lost in the shuffle that is my seed bank and I’ve resuscitated even older with some extra germination care. Not necessary with these nearly bulletproof pea seed. Why I forgot how easy they are to grow during the intervening years is a mystery and I’ve scolded myself to remember to plant annually going forward. Since I was aiming mostly for seed propagation I stepped outside, shoved three knuckle-deep in my mint pot, and stuck a bamboo stake next to the hole. That’s it. No other maintenance and once sprouted they handle all the hard work of finding their own way up the trellis or stake. Just keep them watered and you’ve got peas in a few weeks.
Normally you’d plant peas and beans much earlier in the year as they prefer cooler climates compared to the heat of July to start but here in summer-delayed Canada on the dark side of the apartment they get shielded from midday sun and it’s zero work to pour a cup of water on them as I walk past every morning. Since they can be heavy feeders in that tiny pot I put a drop of liquid all-purpose fertilizer in the cup when I remember which amounts to about every fourth cup between morning tea. Extra fertilizer probably isn’t necessary in well prepared ground plantings.
If you’ve never grown beans or peas in your soil, potted or otherwise, it’s worth finding a small packet of rhizobia bacteria. Any decent garden centre or seed supply will sell you a packet for a buck or two usually under the name ‘pea inoculant’. This functions to help the plant ‘fix’ nitrogen in the soil making it more fertile for not only the current crop but other plants in the same spot now and for a few years into the future. This is one of the reasons you see crop rotation gurus singing the praises of legumes moving through each of your garden beds in succession. Technically there are a few different nitrogen fixers that live in symbiosis with the plants but most soil amendments you buy will include a mixed cocktail of them and once in the soil will multiply happily as long as they have enough organic matter each year. While any soil will likely have some of the beneficial bacteria within naturally, giving beans and peas a booster shot ensures they have the right little beasties that originally evolved at the feet of their plant ancestors.
It’s fun to watch the clever vines put out little feelers grasping around to find anything they can to climb. You will see noticeable growth every day which for the garden uninitiated (black thumbs? kids?) is almost enough of a reward for the minimal effort. After twenty-five days they’re up to my shoulders and will go as high as my 8-foot stake easily. Again I’d normally like these in the ground to make them really take off but even one ten-inch pot’s worth is giving me a handful to eat every third or fourth day. The more you pick, they more the plant makes. I’ve convinced the gullible neighbourhood kids that when they make too much noise outside it alerts a giant who will climb down the beanstalk to their peril.
For my little test pot all this symbiosis means the mint I’ve planted under the heels of the vines (look closely above) is thriving and will continue to do so long after the peas have finished. Handy that since they’ll both go into my cooking pots at the same time for delicious minty peas.
