Snow peas & sugar snap peas

13 years ago

I've always grown shelling peas. I'm really ignorant about these edible pod peas but would like to learn. Can somebody tell me the difference between them and give me advice on some good varieties for zone 7 fall crops? Thanks for any help.

Sandy

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Comments (16)

farmerdilla
13 years ago
Snap peas grow just like shelling peas, but have edible shells. Sugar Snap is a cultivar name for a snap pea that is excellent but a very large plant. gets over 5 ft tall in some instances. Snap peas are also available in dwarf doem just like shelling peas. Snow peas are a bit more tricky, for me less tolerant of conditions. These are used when the pod is flat, before any peas develop in the pod.

Here is a link that might be useful: Snap pea cultivars
iam3killerbs
13 years ago
I've rarely had success with peas because I have trouble getting the timing right so that I can harvest before the heat takes them out, but I'd like to comment that I absolutely love Sugar Snap's tall vines that I can harvest without having to crawl down the row on my hands and knees.

IMO, up at waist to shoulder height on the trellis is where vining things belong. :-)
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Ezzirah, There has to be a reason that your pea plants are turning brown and dying. It could be that the soil stays too wet for them, that your soil pH is lower than 6.5 or higher than 7.5, or that they are contracting a fungal disease. After they have died, have you ever pulled up one and looked at the roots for signs of root rot? Also, how long do they live? Is it more like a week or two, or a month or two? Somewhere in between? Like Dorothy, I have much better success with peas started indoors. They sprout so slowly in wet soil and I think they tend to get diseased much easier, or at least they succumb to disease because they are weaker in cold soil. If they get off to a poor start because of cold soil, they often seem to be slow to grow and produce for many weeks, and that means it can be hard to get a good harvest before the heat begins to have a negative effect on them. I pre-soak my seeds in water for a few hours, then pour them into a ziplock bag with bean/pea innoculant, shake the bag to cover them with the innoculating powder, then plant them into 3 oz. paper cups filled with a sterile, soil-less seed-starting mix. I poke holes in the bottom of the cups before putting the soil-less mix in them. When I transplant the pea plants into the ground, I plant the paper cup along with the plants to avoid disturbing the roots and to minimize the chance of transplant shock. I try to soak the seed and plant it into the cups in mid-Feb. for the first round and put the young, small plants into the ground in early March. I do two plantings about two weeks apart in a good year when I have adequate time. Sometimes in a bad fire winter, I am short of time and either do one big planting, or my late planting sometimes doesn't make it into the ground until 3 or 4 weeks after the first. I move the trellis from one raised bed to another every year so the peas are not growing in the same place every year, which can be important in preventing disease. That's also why I innoculate them. If you are planting peas (or beans) into an area where you've recently grown peas (or beans), the innoculant probably is not necessary. I usually plant a double row of peas in a raised bed, with the trellis running down the middle of the bed and a row of pea plants on either side. Usually my pea rows are about 30' long. Even in a bad year like last year, I'll harvest several pounds of sugar snap peas. In the best sugar snap pea year we've ever had, which was 2010, we harvested 35 lbs. 9 oz. of the two varieties Sugar Snap and Super Sugar Snap. I try to plant 3 to 5 varieties, both pole and bush types. If you're going for the maximum production in the space available, pole types will give you a bigger harvest. In the early 2000s we went through a period with several 'hot' winters back to back, and I finally just stopped planting snap peas for a few years because the weather heated up so early that it was burning up the plants before they could produce much. That hasn't been a issue the last 4 years or so. Dawn
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Charlotte, In winter I normally use hairy vetch mixed with rye, or Austrian winter peas with some form of clover. Some years I have used turnips. Traditonal green peas, whether of the English shelling pea type or the edible podded peas like Sugar Snap peas all suffer freeze damage when temperatures go below roughly 22-25 degrees and aren't a good bet for garden crops over the winter because they will winter-kill without some protection. Even with protection, if the temperatures drop low enough, they'll freeze and die. Some people grow fava beans as an edible fall/winter cover crop, with mixed success in terms of whether or not the beans produce an edible harvest. Still, the plants are pretty cold-tolerant (roughly the same as peas) and as a legume they would be good soil-builders. I like sowing lots of lettuce, mesclun mix, mache, spinach, Swiss chard, kale, sorrel, collards, mustard, beets and turnips. We eat what we can and let the rest serve as a cover crop or a supplement to the chickens' winter diet of grains. I like to sow lots of extra greens (apart from the ones planted specifically for us to eat) so I can harvest them using the cut-and-come-again method and throw handfuls into the chicken runs every day. I've really filled the beds this year with lots of kale and collards because they are very winter hardy, and the mustard plants I use (Ruby Streaks and Giant Southern Red Mustard) are highly ornamental as is the kale. My goal with winter crops first and foremost is to get something edible, but secondly to have something growing to prevent erosion. It helps if they are crops I can rototill into the soil, but if they are too big and cumbersome for that, I yank them at planting time and feed them to the compost pile. Beauty matters....hence all the flowers and the ornamental cabbage and kale. Some years I sow radishes and carrots as cover crops to hold the soil in place. I often plant parsley in winter too which allows it go get big and well-established by spring. We don't necessarily get a harvest from the radishes and carrots (sometimes we do, it depends on the weather) but I like to leave them in place and let them flower in the spring because their flowers attract beneficial insects. I generally sow seeds of chives and onion chives in fall and seeds of bunching onions too. Cilantro is a great cool-season crop as well. While all these are planting more for eating than for use as a cover crop, they also hold the soil in place to prevent erosion, which is one purpose of a winter cover crop. One of my all-time favorite winter cover crops is the various varieties of ornamental kale and ornamental cabbage. They look beautiful, help hold the soil in place and can be cut or pulled and either put on the compost pile or rototilled into the ground. If you are going to use ornamental kale and cabbage, they're easier to deal with in spring if you pull them and compost them when they're done, making them more of a compost crop than a green manure crop. In order to work them directly into the soil, you have to chop them up into smaller pieces first. You also can sow winter wheat, but that doesn't give you an edible crop--it does give you lots of mass in the spring. For pretty cover crops to hold soil in place and prevent erosion, I often plant pansies and violas, and we have Laura Bush petunias, poppies and larkspur in the flower border around our veggie garden. They usually reseed themselves and sprout sometime in fall or early winter. This week, I noticed the poppies and larkspurs already are sprouting. The current Laura Bush petunias have been growing since last winter, and they'll often stay green and in bloom until the temperatures hit the mid-teens. Then, as soon as the weather warms up again, either they regrow from the roots, or new volunteer plants sprout, or both. My garden slopes, so I need to have something growing in as much of it as possible all winter long to reduce erosion. Successs with cover crops in the fall through early spring is highly dependent on the weather. In a warm to average cool-season, just about any cool-season crop works as a cover crop. In a very cold winter like we had a couple of years back, only the most cold-hardy ones like hairy vetch or Austrian winter peas will make it through the bitter cold. Sometimes winter cover crops do freeze back to the ground on an especially cold night, but then they often regrow quickly. If you grow lettuce in the winter/spring, if you'll leave it in the ground as it goes to seed, small birds like the goldfinches love the seeds so I like to leave it there for them to enjoy. Dawn
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gardener_sandy
Original Author
13 years ago
LOL I just finished picking my first batch of green beans ("snaps" to us older Virginians) and I totally agree about the height of vining crops. These are Blue Lake bush beans and my head is still spinning from bending over them. Oh, but they are going to be so good tonight with dinner! Well worth the work.

Which varieties do you prefer? I'm looking for a good producer because I don't have a lot of room for them. My veggie patch is easy to keep watered and I can give them a bit of shade until the weather moderates some so I think I'll try them this year. Maybe I'll put out a block of a couple of kinds to see which does better for me and which we like best. That's always a fun experiment.

Sandy
cabrita
13 years ago
Sugar snaps can be eaten raw and can get a little 'fat' in the middle and still be good. Also, the peas inside are good and sweet when they form. Snow
peas have to be picked when still flat, and often get strings. In general I do not care for the flavor of the peas inside when the snow peas got too mature, so either save as seed, or I cooked them for the dogs. I cook snow peas and sugar snaps together in many dishes.

Just two days ago I pulled the last pea plants, the mammoth melting sugar edible pea pods. We grew lots of peas, so here is my report for the 08-09 pea season:

Sugar snaps (pole)
Sweet flavor, great raw in salads, can eat the peas inside, prolific and drama free unless it warms up.

Pea snaps Cascadia (bush)
Bush type peas but they benefit from support, tomato cages are ideal. Pretty good producer and tasty sweet snap peas. Peas inside also tasty.

Oregon sugar pod - snow peas (pole)
They do well in cool weather and get fairly large before they get peas inside. Once they get peas, they also develop string. Peas inside not so tasty, best to eat only pods unless saving seed. Big difference if planting in cold or spring like weather (OK if planted in November or December, but February it is too late in my zone).

Oregon sugar pod snow peas (bush)
Tall bush, likes tomato cage type support. Good producer, need to pick them a bit smaller than the pole snow pea version. These could be planted in succession, Nov, Dec, Jan.

Dwarf gray sugar pod (bush)
Again, a very tall bush, benefits from tomato cage support. Beautiful two tone purple flowers. They made it late into our garden, so perhaps colder weather works better for them, but other than the flowers they had no saving grace. They got fibrous when the pods were really small, the peas are not so good - I cooked them and gave them to the dogs.

Mammoth melting sugar peas, semi vining
I would treat this one as a pole. They are snow peas that get really wide and huge before getting fibrous and large peas inside. They are fairly warm weather tolerant.
queenofthemountain
13 years ago
Resurrecting this thread to see if there are any more opinions on snap pea varieties?

I have grown Sugar Snap and Super Sugar Snap the last 2 years. This year SS has gotten powdery mildew, and even before that I saw a lot of weirdly misshapen pods, which SSS did not have. The SSS tastes great and produced a ton and I will definitely plant it again, but I know there are various other snap peas out there. Anything else worth trying?
Edie
13 years ago
Super Sugar Snap is awesome. If I had a proper garden this year I'd be growing it too. I'm container gardening this year, which is new for me, so I'm only growing smaller varieties while I get the hang of it.

I'm trying Cascadia Bush Snap for the first time this spring.

There's a variety called Sugar Lace that is supposed to be really dwarf, and an improved version, Sugar Lace II. I may try that one in the fall, or next year.

Years ago I lived in the upper Hudson Valley in NY, and Dwarf Grey Sugar did quite well for me there. I didn't have any disease on it or any other issues beyond picking it soon enough. This pea is an older variety. It hates hot weather. As a true snow pea DGS is meant to be picked when the pods are small, smooth and perfectly flat. If you can feel bumps from developing peas, they are too far gone. As cabrita says, if you let them get past that point, you won't enjoy them. They are not and never will be as sweet as a sugar snap. I thought they were nice when picked properly tiny and cooked "al dente."
cyrus_gardner
13 years ago
I have questions:

1- How can you freez young, full tender sugaar snaps with pods, or
shelled(while very tender)? Do you need to blanch them?

2- I have seen in Asian markets selling snow pea greens,
which is almost same as snaps. How do you prepare them?

I love fresh young SNPs. I can eat them off the vine, in salads, omletts, stir fry.
rockguy
13 years ago
Eat them fresh, much better. If you must freeze them, blanch for 1 minute or til they change "color". I don't care for the frozen ones, kinda tasteless. You might could mix them in a stir-fry.
mauirose
13 years ago
i tried Sugar Sprint this year which is smaller and not as delicious as Super Sugar Snap but is only about 2 or 3 feet tall and stringless. i like to let SSS get really fat before harvest, is it just me or do they seem to get sweeter that way? The pods must be strung at any age but it is so much easier to string a fresh pea.

queenofthemountain, did you get to taste any of the Sugar Snaps to compare to Super Sugar Snap? i have heard others say the taste is better? But also what your experience confirms, no resistance to PM.

i was suprised to discover that snap peas come in yellow and purple. i know Sylvia grew some Golden Sweet snow peas recently and i just received some Opal Creek and Sugar Magnolia seeds. Anyone else trying any of the colored podded peas?
mauirose
13 years ago
oops, hit the send button too fast, also wanted to mention that Opal Creek is supposed to be very good for pea greens. According to the pea's creator, Mr. Alan Kapuler, "the pea leaves are sweeter than any other we have found, so far".

try them cyrus!
whgille
13 years ago
Hi All

I am growing Super Sugar Snap from Kitchen Garden seeds and they are very good! Very productive, I have to pick every day, no mildew problems. They took the freeze that we had and the hot temperatures that we are having now.

Silvia
mauirose
12 years ago
Rebsie Fairholm is an amateur pea breeder in England. i think Annie posted a link to her blog in another thread. She is posting again after a year's hiatus. i really enjoy reading about her projects and thought you might, too.

Here is a link that might be useful: Daughter of the Soil
cyrus_gardner
12 years ago
some of my snap peas that are not even 2ft tall, are flowering.
Maybe they are bush type? Or maybe it suddenly got too warm?
We had unusually cold March, then unusually warm April, not very good
for cool crops, I think.
subrosa
11 years ago
I planted my peas on a six foot trellis. They are 5-6 ft tall now and just starting to bloom but only near the top. If they grow much taller, I'm afraid they will bend over and snap off. If I cut off the top of the vine will it force blossoms lower down? I see a couple of peas forming now - can hardly wait to taste them.
murkey
8 years ago
I happened to mention to DH that I'd like to grow some peas this year, thinking of the kind you shell out ( English Peas), which the grandkids love. Instead he bounced right out to the garden and put in a huge bed of sugar snaps, that are starting to bear like gangbusters. Except for snacking on a few raw ones, and putting them in the occasional stir fry, what do I do with them? Does anyone have any recipes?
emmers_m
8 years ago
I like them raw in any kind of salad (in quantity, sometimes I think I could replace the lettuce with them!) or steamed briefly for a cooked vegetable.

I have thought about, but haven't tried, replacing the green beans in my vinaigrette based potato salad with them.

~emmers

Snow peas & sugar snap peas

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Snow peas & sugar snap peas

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