Pea Seeds

Peas are at their most flavoursome picked fresh off the plant. In fact, many gardeners will tell you it’s difficult to even get them into the kitchen as they are so delicious and moreish eaten raw when harvesting! Peas are a firm favourite which, along with beans, can be sown in succession every few weeks for a continuous, delicious crop throughout the summer. Plus, by planting vegetable peas close to sweet peas you’ll improve pollination and increase your harvest. There are a huge range to choose from – early variety such as Pea Early Kelvedon Wonder and Pea Early Onward seeds can be sown as early as February, while maincrop varieties such as Pea Onward and Pea Douce Provence seeds are sown from March through May. Sow straight outdoors in a well-watered flat bottomed drill 15cm (6in) wide, sowing about ten seeds per 30cm (12in) in a zig-zag manner. Allow 60cm (24in) between rows, cover with about 2cm (1in) of soil and firm down with the flat edge of a rake. Peas were grown as far back as 4,500BC in Egypt and up to 30 different varieties of pea were grown by the Romans. Peas were an expensive delicacy in the Tudor times, often imported from the Netherlands, and started becoming more popular in the late 1700s when breeders started developing sweeter tasting varieties.