I grew Cascadia twice last year - late winter/early spring and then again in late summer/fall. I'm in Middle GA - it's hot here. The first round were planted about a month before last frost and they came up in about two weeks - much better than others. They produced pretty well considering how quickly it got hot. I mulched heavily which helped. I don't think 48 days is realistic tho... more like 68 for me. I started planting small numbers again in late August hoping for a fall/winter crop. They would sprout, but wither from the heat. Finally ones planted in early October took. I got a small crop, but finally they were pretty much wiped out by hard freezes in late Dec. I will plant them again this spring - am tracking soil temps this year. :)

Southern Exposure Seed Exchange. They probably have around 15 varieties to choose from. Try the red rippers if you have room, because the vines get long and take over everything! The pods are longer than my forearm and filled with 18-20 seeds. Plus they turn pink when they are mature so they are easy to find and very easy to shell.

I'm not sure who to contact, but someone at Clemson should be able to help. I used to buy them from Park Seed back in the late 1980's. Hercules - Breeder: South Carolina Agric. Expt. Sta., Clemson. Characteristics: semi-erect plant habit; medium maturity; pods are straight, 22 cm long; pod color at green shell stage, green; large, coffee colored, crowder type seeds. Cowpea Newsletter, 1(2):7-14, 1986. 1981. DarJones

Susan, Glad you finally got a pea to taste. I use innoculants sporadically but not often. I'll use one if I am planting peas or beans in an area where no legumes have been grown in recent years. Otherwise, the rhizobia tends to be there in the soil already. Whether to freeze or refrigerate the seed is your choice. I don't do it because of space considerations. If you do choose to keep it in a freezer or refrigerator, be sure it is in an air-tight container. I have found that all home-grown peas are infinitely better than any you buy at the store---there is no comparison between the two. That's why I grow so many veggies---because fresh, locally-grown veggies taste like veggies. The produce purchased at the grocery store is grown long distances away and shipped so it is several days old by the time you get it and the quality (and nutrient content) decreases every day. Sometimes you can find snap peas at Farmer's Markets that really are locally grown and fresh, but even they tend not to be quite as fresh and tasty as home-grown. They show general heat stress....browning, yellowing or fading of the leaves' normally lovely color. They stop blooming or the blooms stop forming into peas. The plants can go from looking pretty good to looking pretty bad practically overnight when the heat arrives. You do have to plant a lot of seed/plants to get an appreciable amount of peas. I plant 4 packets of seed in the spring and 4 packets in the fall in order to grow all we can eat fresh and have plenty left over to freeze and I tend to plant tall types that get 5' to 8' tall because they produce more peas per square foot for me than dwarf peas. I have found freshly-picked and freshly-frozen sugar snap peas are tastier than frozen sugar snap peas purchased at the grocery store. In a good season (and good is relative because we usually get too hot too early in spring and stay too hot too late in fall), I expect 20-40 lbs. of peas from my long pea bed. Tim and I eat all we get and could eat more if I could grow more, but even in our large garden, there's only so much space I'll give to something whose production is 'iffy'. Some years it gets very hot very early and we get nothing. That's a risk you face in planting many of the cool-season crops in a region like ours where the cool season can be incredibly brief. Peas are interesting. Even the ones touted as 'mildew-resistant' sometimes get PM and some of the ones not touted as 'mildew-resistant' seem to be quite resistant any way. When the taller ones yield well, they yield incredibly well. I've never been as happy with the yield on the small ones....and I give the smaller ones a 3' tall chicken-wire trellis to climb anyway. I feel like they do better when they have something other than each other to climb. For the fall, sow your seed in mid-August to early September and expect to begin harvesting, more or less, two months after the peas sprout. It is very weather dependant. For other fall planting dates and row spacing, etc. I've linked the OSU Fall Planting Guide. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Fall Gardening Guide