Gadenin日本語Get the appSow shoulder to shoulder, not at pea spacing
Everything written about spacing peas assumes you want pods. You do not. You want the top four inches of a young stem, so the plant never has to build a root system large enough to fill and ripen a pod, and it never has to stand up on its own. That means you sow at a density that would be absurd for a podding crop: seeds almost touching, roughly half an inch (12 mm) apart in every direction, which works out around one seed per square centimeter.
In a tray, that is a solid layer of peas with the gaps just closed. A standard seed tray of about 10 by 20 inches (25 by 50 cm) takes somewhere between five and seven ounces (150 to 200 g) of dry seed, and the finished mat of shoots holds itself upright because the stems lean on each other. Sow it thin and the shoots flop over sideways, sit on damp compost and rot at the base.
In open ground the same logic applies, sown as a band six to eight inches (15 to 20 cm) wide rather than a single line, with seed about three quarters of an inch (2 cm) apart. A band gives you a block you can shear across in one pass instead of chasing individual plants down a row.
| Where you sow | Seed spacing | Depth | Seed for one sowing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shallow windowsill tray | Almost touching, 1/2 in (12 mm) | Pressed in and covered 1/4 in (5 mm) | 5 to 7 oz (150 to 200 g) per 10x20 in tray |
| Deep pot or window box | 1/2 to 3/4 in (12 to 20 mm) | 3/4 in (2 cm) | About 1 oz (30 g) per square foot |
| Open ground band | 3/4 in (2 cm), in a 6 to 8 in band | 1 to 1.5 in (2.5 to 4 cm) | About 2 oz (60 g) per foot of band |
Whole dried peas from a shop are your cheapest seed
At the seed rate above, a packet of garden peas is gone in one tray and the cost per cut is painful. Whole dried peas sold for soup are the same species and germinate at the same rate, for a fraction of the price by weight. Buy them whole, not split. Split peas have had the seed coat and the growing point removed in processing and will never sprout; if half the peas in the bag fall apart into two flat discs, that bag is useless as seed.
The other thing to check is whether the seed has been dressed with fungicide. Garden seed sold for sowing sometimes is, and a colored coating on the pea is the giveaway. Dressed seed is fine for a podding crop where you eat the pod months later, but you are eating this plant fourteen days from sowing, so use undressed food-grade dried peas or seed you know is untreated.
Marrowfat and blue-type dried peas give the heaviest, sweetest shoots. Anything sold as a whole dried green or yellow pea will work. Store the bag somewhere cool and dry and it stays viable for years, so it is worth buying a couple of pounds at once.
Test any new bag before you commit a whole tray to it. Wrap twenty peas in a damp paper towel, leave them somewhere warm for three days and count how many have split a root. Below fifteen out of twenty, sow the bag thicker or find another one.
Soak first, but stop before they go sour
Dry peas take up close to their own weight in water before they can germinate, and letting them do that in a bowl rather than in the compost brings emergence forward by two or three days and makes it far more even. Cover the seed with about twice its depth of cool water and leave it somewhere out of direct sun.
The window is eight to twelve hours. Left longer, the peas start to ferment: the water goes cloudy and smells yeasty, the seed coats slime, and germination drops off sharply. If you started a soak in the evening, sow it the next morning rather than the next evening.
- Soak eight to twelve hours Cool water, twice the depth of the seed, no lid clamped down. The peas roughly double in size and the wrinkles smooth out. Drain and rinse them once before sowing.
- Spread on firmed, moist compost Fill the tray with an inch and a half to two inches (4 to 5 cm) of all-purpose potting mix, level it and firm it lightly, then water it before the seed goes on. Scatter the soaked peas in one even layer and nudge the bare patches closed by hand.
- Cover thinly and press down A quarter of an inch (5 mm) of compost over the top in a tray, more like an inch (2.5 cm) in a deep pot or the ground. Press the whole surface down firmly with a flat hand or a board. Contact matters more than depth here.
- Cover the tray for three days A second tray inverted on top, or a board, keeps the surface dark and damp and makes the shoots push up together. Lift it as soon as the first pale loops appear, or the stems stretch and go weak.
Temperature, timing and what to write down
Peas germinate from about 40F (4C) upward and are quickest around 65F to 70F (18C to 21C), which is why a tray indoors comes up faster than the same seed in a cold bed outside. Above 80F (27C) the seed rots as often as it sprouts, so summer sowings belong in the coolest, shadiest spot you have rather than the greenhouse.
Sow again every seven to ten days if you want a continuous supply, because each tray only gives you a couple of cuts and then it is finished. Two trays on the go, offset by a week, keeps one cutting while the other grows.
Note the sowing date on the edge of each tray, the source of the seed, and the number of days until the first cut. Bags of dried peas vary more than seed packets do, and after three or four sowings you will know which source gives a thick stand and which one leaves gaps. Record the depth of compost too: shallow trays dry out faster and reach the first cut a day or two behind a deeper one.