Be sure the two of you are communicating clearly. There are three kinds of cool-season green peas, and you want to be sure you're growing the kind she wants.

Green peas fall into these categories: shelling peas (aka English peas), which when harvested are removed from the pod before cooking. You discard the pod and cook/eat the peas. Then there's snow peas, which you harvest while the peas inside the pods are tiny. You eat them pod and all, although the peas are so tiny that there isn't too much too them. The third kind is often referred to as snap peas or edible podded peas. You harvest them when the peas are full-sized and cook/eat them, pod and pea and all, for as long at the pods are tender enough to eat. Very late in the pea season, once the snap pea pods are getting kinda tough, you can continue to grow them, but you need to shell them (like the English peas), discard the pods and eat the peas at that point. I usually do that with the last or the last two pickings of snap peas.

Then, be sure you get the kind you want in terms of growth habit. Peas come in vining, bush and semi-bush forms. All peas will try to climb, but bush and semi-bush types just sort of climb all over each other whereas vining types need a trellis or fence to climb.

We start peas early here in order to beat the heat. That means we have to be prepared to cover them up in temperatures are going too far below the mid-20s. Generally the cold won't necessarily kill them, but it will freeze them back. If you get a really late cold spell when the plants already are mature enough to be blooming, the cold weather can knock the blossoms off the plants. That will delay your harvest as you'll have to wait for new blooms to form and to set new peas, but it isn't the end of the world.

Pea seed will germinate well in soil that has reached 50 degrees, but it still will take it a week or a week-and-a-half. In colder soil, it can take a month or more and there is the risk the pea seeds will rot before they germinate. Some of us get around that by germinating the seed indoors and then planting sprouted seeds or tiny young plants into the garden soon after they sprout. Peas need to grow in well-drained soil so if you have clay, they need to be grown in raised beds or on raised ridges or mounds.

If I am growing peas in an area where any legume has been grown in the last 3 years, I don't inoculate the seed. However, when growing them in an area where I haven't grown legumes recently, I always inoculate the seed because it gives you better yields.

Avoid over-fertilizing them or starting them out in soil that is too rich, or you'll have huge, lush pea plants that don't flower and form peas. Also, pea plants receiving excess nitrogen are incredibly attractive to pea aphids. (However, some years the aphids just show up in droves even if you haven't fed the pea plants any nitrogen.)

Peas are usually one of the earliest veggies planted here, and can go into the ground about the same time you put your onion plants into the ground, as long as you watch for those late cold nights. In general, in most areas, you can plant peas about 8-10 weeks before your last frost. I sometimes wait later than that because my average last frost date is March 28th but in 8 of the last 10 years, we've had our last freezing temperature or frost in the first week of May. I try to watch the weather and plant the peas when it feels right, which usually is sometime in March but sometimes not until the very beginning of April. In an average year, the peas will continue producing throughout May and a little into June. In a wet, cool spring, they may produce until the end of June. If heat arrives early, though....like, for example, hitting the 90s Easter Week, the peas get powdery mildew and start looking like crap before they can produce much.

I usually only grow Sugar Snap peas because they give me the best harvest over a prolonged period. In a good year, I might get 40 or more pounds from a 40' long double row of peas climbing a wire fencing trellis that runs down the center of the bed. In a bad year, I don't get much at all. With peas, how well they do in any given year is highly dependent on the weather.

I grew English peas our first couple of years here and got great harvests. Then I sat down and shelled them. When I was done, I looked at the huge mound of pods that were going to the compost pile, compared to the much smaller bowl of shelled peas for us to eat, and decided I didn't want to grow something that required I throw away 80% of the harvest.

You also can harvest pea shoots (the tender ends of the pea vines) and eat them sprinkled on top of salads, by the way.

I usually grow Sugar Snap and Super Sugar Snap, but also have been happy with Sugar Bon, Sugar Lace and Cascadia.

Because I like to grow a colorful garden, I've also grown Spring Blush snap peas (the pods have a pink blush to them) and yellow snap peas (Opal Creek Yellow). There's some blue forms of peas, but I haven't grown those.

Back when I grew English shelling peas, I usually grew Wando, Telephone, or Alaska.

For snow peas, the only ones I've grown are the ones called Melting Sugar, I think.

Peas are easy. The hardest part is getting the seed to germinate in cool soil.

I'll link the OSU Garden Planning Guide which includes recommended planting dates and spacing. The dates for spring planting will include a range of dates---let's use February 15 - March 10 as an example. Within this range of dates, the earliest date is for extreme southeastern OK and the latest date is for extreme northwestern OK and all of us in between those two extremes can pick an appropriate time somewhere in the middle. I don't plant by date so much as by soil temperature/air temperature, but it is a rare year that I will put pea plants in the ground in February since experience has taught me that we still are likely to have cold temperatures dipping down into the teens sometimes in February. I am in a low-lying microclimate, though, so I've learned to work with the weather I get in it. I also keep floating row cover handy to cover the peas any time that I expect our overnight lows will dip down below about 22-23 degrees. That is not strict necessarily because at that temperature they won't necessarily freeze back to the ground....but what if the forecast says 22 degrees and we drop down to 15 degrees. (We often drop much lower than forecast, and it has made me very cautious.)

In a good pea year, there's nothing more rewarding than a row of beautiful pea plants blooming and covered with peas. In a bad pea year, there's nothing more frustrating than having extreme cold freeze back the plants or extreme heat bring an abrupt end to their productive period. With peas, we just do the best we can and hope the weather works with us instead of against us.

If you don't grow many cool season crops and aren't sure exactly when your low temperatures tend to stop dropping below the 22-23 degree range, you could plant half the peas earlier, and then plant the second group a couple of weeks later. That gives you double the chances of getting a harvest.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Oklahoma Garden Planning Guide

It's not advice, but here's a friendly snow pea shoot with two tendrils reaching out for a support :)

Nice pea. And what is that plant with the purple stems behind it?

thanks for asking! It is a Gynura Aurantiaca from a local box store:

http://www.exoticangel.com/plant-library/species/purple-passion/item/516-purple-passion

Very unfussy and the leaves are velvety.