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atash_gw

So many peas, so little time...

atash
17 years ago

This is more to do with survival gardening than permaculture, tho I suppose that it is relevent since peas fix nitrogen.

Peas do a lot more tricks than many people realize.

I have at least 4 different varieties to work with. Two are planted already. I am late with the other two, but since this spring has been unseasonably cold, and my summers are on the cool side anyway (usually), it should be OK if they go in late.

My first ones planted came up pretty quick. I think they are a vigorous variety. It's Blauwschokkers blue-podded soup pea from Seed Savers.

Before rich people started eating immature peas in 18th century France, peas were normally eaten fully ripe the same way that people still eat "dry beans". You use fully ripe dry peas to make pea soup.

Most sweet-pea (I mean Pisum not Lathyrus) types won't work. If you harvest the peas fully ripe and dry--they are all shrivelled up! Their sugar content is too high to dry firm. They have been bred that way for several hundred years now. Some older pea varieties don't have the shrivelled seeds, and can be optionally used as soup peas.

At high latitudes, this was a very important source of protein. Animals can't make their own protein; even a cow has to get it from the grass and grass just doesn't have that much (clover and alfalfa are more generous, I think). Typical meat consumption for a farming family around the 18th century in northern Europe would have been one pig for the whole year. They were butchered in cold weather so the meat would keep long enough to process, typically by salting.

Peas are easier to handle. You just let them dry naturally and they keep in a cool dry spot until they run out--for up to a few years if necessary. Plus you get vastly more protein for the amount of land. And they fix their own nitrogen.

Peas are an ancient crop. I've often wondered where they are native. Probably southern Europe, probably their ancestors growing over the winter to take advantage of winter rains. In any case they are extremely tolerant of cool weather. I can conceivably plant them in February here, and also plant a 2nd crop late summer.

Yellow peas have a flavor that is not as "muddy" as that of green peas. They are preferred in Sweden for making the characteristic "Thursday Soup" that is eaten with pancakes. I have been unable to find seed for growing yellow peas--except by visiting IKEA and raiding their food section for very growable yellow peas intended for soup!

The yellow peas are a commercial variety. The wonderful thing about them, that I did not realize until after I planted them and they started growing, is that they are "afolia" types. They have leafy appendages at the base of the tendrils--I suppose that the tendrils themselves are modified leaves..but in any case that's all they've got, and lots of them. If you plant them close enough together (which I didn't do, not realizing that they were afolias), the tendrils interlock, and you don't have to bother providing any support to the vines.

They give a fairly generous crop, and finish early enough in the year to grow a few more crops of other things.

I also have an afolia "sweet" pea type (the kind of peas most folks grow, or in other words NOT soup peas).

OK, so you can eat them green, or eat them dry--but you can also eat the vines themselves!!

Dou Miou (I have no idea how to transliterate that from Chinese; I'm doing the best I can). In English you can call it "pea vine". Varieties of peas bred for tender shoots. You let them grow for a while, then start harvesting young shoots. They make a fiberous, fairly tasty vegetable stir-fried with a little soy sauce or oyster sauce. It is available in Chinese markets on the West Coast of the USA certain times of year, and it is usually not cheap. It is very easy to grow in a cool climate.

Yet another Chinese idea is to eat the pods. I have yet another variety, a dwarf snow-pea. Dwarf, but alas not self-supporting. I will have to give them something to climb on, for best results.

I wish I had a bamboo grove, to supply me with canes for my crops that like support. I do have some bamboos; not ideal for garden architecture tho. It should be interesting when my Chusquea gigantea has spare canes. Not as straight as I would like but hey Chinese farmers in cold parts of China do use Phyllostachys which has the same problem. Chusqueas are rare in cultivation, and to the best of my knowledge not used on any scale in habitat (although Guaduas which are massive and straighter, are). More on bamboos suitable for these kinds of projects later.

Protein-wise, you get by far the most out of dry soup peas. I would guess the least from edible-podded peas.

Some people eat "snap peas", which are edible podded but eaten slightly more mature than snow peas, and having round not flat pods. Those probably have a bit more protein than the snow peas. You can stir-fry them like snow-peas, or eat them raw in a relish tray.

One more option: "petit pois" are particularly small, sweet sweet-peas, also known as "baby peas". I think in the French language ALL sweet peas are called "petit pois" (that's the expression I learned--I believe it is derived from the fact that it was in France that people first started eating immature peas, and these were simply called "petit pois"), but there is a distinct "baby pea" variety known as "petit pois".

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