Peas in a Sustainable Garden: Benefits and Limitations
Considering adding peas, whether snap, snow or shelling, to your sustainable garden? Consider the benefits and the limitations.
Peas do not naturalize well in many areas of California, and it may be more complicated to actually receive the benefit of soil-nitrogen fixation from legumes than many permaculturists and sustainable-gardening enthusiasts may claim or realize. Properly inoculated legume cover crops that are tilled under as green manures are preferable for fixing soil-nitrogen as opposed to garden legumes and vegetables grown for harvest, as legume plants for harvest use most of the nitrogen they fix to produce their own crops, and generally do not share nitrogen with nearby plants until after their own growing season.
Peas offer a special benefit for sustainability in that they are generally easy and reliable to grow from seed and for saving seeds. GardenZeus recommends selecting several of the most vigorous, early plants, and saving the entire crop of first, full pods, as well as selecting early full pods from other plants. Note that this will reduce yield for harvest, as growing even a few pods to full maturity tends to exhaust plants. Allow pods not grown to maturity to remain on the plants until pods fade from dark green to light green, yellow, and finally tan or brown. Remove and shell pods after they appear brown and dead, and after nearby stems are brown and dry, or after the entire plant is dead. By selecting the most vigorous, productive, and healthy plants for seed-saving, over the course of several to a dozen or more plant generations, you can refine a strain of pea that is highly productive and perfectly suited to your exact soil and growing conditions.
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