How to Grow Peas: Snap, Snow, and Shelling

Pick your type first

All peas grow the same way, but you eat them differently, so choose before you buy seed.

Snap peas are the easiest win: you eat the whole pod, sweet and crisp, so nothing is wasted. Snow peas are flat and picked young for stir-fries. Shelling or English peas are grown for the peas inside and the pod is thrown away, which means you need far more plants for the same bowl.

• Snap peas: eat the whole pod, about 62 days, best value per plant.
• Snow peas: flat pods picked young, great for stir-fry.
• Shelling peas: about 63 days, sweet shelled peas, but low yield per plant.

Sow early into cool soil

Peas are a cool-season crop. Sow them 4 to 6 weeks before your last spring frost, as soon as the soil can be worked. They germinate in soil as cool as 40 F, so you plant them while it is still too cold for almost everything else.

Plant the seed 1 inch deep and about 2 inches apart. Do not wait for warm weather. Peas planted late run straight into summer heat, which stops flowering and ends the crop before you get much. In warm regions you can also sow a fall crop about 8 weeks before the first fall frost.

• Sow 4 to 6 weeks before last frost, into 40 F or warmer soil.
• Plant 1 inch deep, 2 inches apart, rows 18 inches apart.
• Heat is the enemy: late sowing means a poor crop.

Give them a trellis

Even short pea varieties lean and flop, and taller ones climb 4 to 6 feet. Put a trellis, netting, or brush in before they need it, because chasing tangled vines later is a losing game. A net or a row of twiggy branches along the row is enough for the vines to grab.

Peas hold themselves up with tendrils once they find something to climb, so they need less tying than tomatoes. Set the support at sowing time and they take it from there.

Pick every 2 to 3 days

Peas turn from sweet to starchy fast, so pick them every 2 to 3 days once they start. Snap peas are ready when the pods are plump but still bright and crisp. Snow peas are picked flat, before the peas swell. Shelling peas are ready when the pods are full and rounded but not yet dull.

As with beans, keeping the plant picked tells it to keep flowering. Peas crop for only about 3 weeks in spring, so pick often to get the most out of that short window. A shelling pea plant gives only about a quarter pound of shelled peas, which is why snap peas, where you eat the whole pod, give you far more food per plant.

• Pick every 2 to 3 days to keep the plant producing.
• Snap peas: plump and crisp. Snow peas: flat and young.
• The spring crop lasts about 3 weeks, so harvest often.