They are at their very best when they are raw, in the garden, or fresh from the garden. It is still cool at my house so mine are doing fine, but they have certainty been different from variety to variety. The Super Sugar Snap have been earlier and at this point have out-produced the others hands-down, no contest. In all fairness tho, they get a little more sun each day. The Cascadia are short vines, of course, and the pods seem to fill out very quickly. You have to be on your toes with them and harvest everyday. The Mammouth Melting Sugar are also small vines and they are the snow pea type. They produce a flat pod with a lot of very small peas inside. Good for stir-fry and such. The Sugar Snap vines are about the same height as the Super Snap Snap (5 ft) but production has been slower. They are close in taste to the Sugar Snap but with Oklahoma Spring weather being so unpredictable, Super Sugar Snap is probably a better choice just because of DTM. Mine have suffered through wind, hail, pounding rain, and a chicken attack but I picked a bowl full yesterday plus what I ate in the garden. Diane, I have tried to freeze them in the past and I am not happy with the results. I guess I am just doing something wrong, but I won't them to be firm and bright green and I haven't been able to achieve that. We just eat all we can and share with friends. I would love to preserve them, but it didn't work for me. Any ideas anyone?

Mine are going crazy with blooms right now, and we've been harvesting for a little over a week. So far the harvest hasn't been huge, but it has been steady. They seemed to stall on those days our high temps were in the 93-98 degree range, but now that it is a little cooler here, they are a little happier and putting out new growth and tons of blooms. I think the rain we got, which only was a half-inch, pleased them greatly. I'm hoping this week's cold front makes them even more happy. At least our sugar snap peas aren't being hailed upon, flooded or being hit by tornadoes. As long as they are still alive and rain is falling, I think they'll keep producing for a while. The wind today did beat the crap out of them. Kim, I always freeze some, but only about 1 year out of 3 do I put tons and tons of them in the freezer. Tim was out of town on business most of last week, so I didn't even pick them and take them into the house. I just picked them and munched on them while working in the garden---instant, garden-fresh fast food. In the fall, you'll probably need row cover to keep them happy long enough to produce. While they tolerate very cold temperatures, if the cold temps hit while they are blooming or about to bloom, those cold temperatures can knock the blooms right off the plants. I don't cover them up at night unless we're expecting temperatures below the mid-20s. Sometimes we get a night or two like that in late Sept or early Oct, but it is more common to get them in November. If you want to grow a variety that doesn't need to be trellised, I grew Cascadia two years ago and Sugar Lace last year, and both of them produced tons and tons of peas----more than my Super Sugar Snaps or Sugar Snaps growing on trellises were able to produce. Because we've already had high temps here hit 98 degrees a couple of times and 93-95 more often than I can believe for May, I am worrying that the green beans won't begin blooming early enough to avoid heat-related blossom drop. Instead of succession sowing some more green beans, I'm going to plant an enormous number of southern peas instead because the heat can't stop them from producing. My mind has moved beyond the warm-season crops to the hot-season crops because it seems like we have gone from the cool season to the hot season in a very brief period of time. My short day onions are bulbing up. It always happens at this time of the year, and it always catches me by surprise. I have to count backwards from now to the time I planted them, realize it is time for them to start bulbing up and say "okay, this is normal". All the cool-season plants I planted are doing better than the sugar snap peas, but that is not unusual. They are the most finicky when it comes to having 32 degree temperatures one morning and then 98 degree temperatures a day or two later. They don't like those crazy temperature swings. I get the best sugar snap pea harvest when we consistently stay cool and moist. This year cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be described as cool and moist---hence the sugar snap pea behavior.

My sugar snaps share trellises with my cherry tomatoes. So they MUST be out when the cherries need to go in. I plant sugar snaps in November, and am (hopefully!) harvesting in late March. Depends on the winter weather. I could put in the cherries earlier, but I'm not sure I can arrange for the sugar snaps to be done earlier. You have a long growing season, and beans do well in heat. So I'd just pull the sugar snaps when they aren't producing anymore, and plant the beans then. If the peas have slowed down production, and if your weather is getting very warm, they'll be done in a week or two.

No, no, that's what you want them to do. They are helping to support each other right now, which is a good thing. Some shorter varieties don't even require staking and will just kind of support each other in a clump, just like you have. If your string isn't enough, you can also push some stakes or tree branches around/among them to give them more to climb. The more they have to hang on to (including their neighbors), the more likely they'll be to withstand high winds as they grow. Good luck!