hmmm, I had some beloved geraniums that I took cuttings from, and the tips fell over same as your peas. I just happened to pick up one of the fallen tips, and there rolled up in a tiny piece of leaf was.....a worm. Next time you have something drop, take it and very gently examine the leaf. Once I found out what it was, I used Sevin dust, but of course my plants are not meant to be eaten, and they are in pots.

Yes, I plant sweet peas almost every year, usually at one end or the other of one of my regular rows of peas. The major "problem" with them is the weather. They are kind of a gamble here. If it's a cool to average year, they are fine and can be very beautiful. If its a hot year, they may fizzle out prematurely without having many flowers. The other problem with them is critters. I have had them chewed up pretty badly by woodchucks or rabbits, but this doesn't seem to happen ever time, so I think there are other things that animals might prefer. The earlier you plant them, the better they seem to do -- sow as soon as the soil can be worked. As long as the summer isn't excessively hot (upper 80s and 90s), if you dead head them, they'll bloom quite a bit longer.

Lathyrus chloranthus. Joe

The main difference between an "edible" podded pea and a regular pea is a gene to make "vellum" which is the clear, tough,sort of parchment paper like inner lining of the pod. If you are so inclined, you can peel that away on a more mature pod, and also remove the "string" along the seam, and yield a much more edible product. However, its a lot simpler just to grow snow or snap peas, which lack this gene. If you have access to a university library, you could look up the following article and learn all about the genetics of edible podded peas -- they only give the first few pages online. No, it won't poison you -- it will just be tough to chew. Here is a link that might be useful: Genetics of snap peas abstract