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Letter to the editor

Garden delights, if you peas

Florida's winter is just right for a crop of bountiful, beautiful, edible peas and their fragrant flowers.

By John A. Starnes Jr., Special to the Times
Published November 3, 2007

We rarely see either edible peas or "sweet peas" in gardens here, but they will thrive in winter and spring if given full sun, rich fertile soil that isn't too acid, something to climb and plenty of cool or even cold nights. Heat is their enemy.

Once they start to climb, just entwine them into an adjacent trellis or chain-link fence and they'll take off on their own as their tendrils grab hold.

Kids of all ages may be surprised by the lovely blooms of garden peas, ranging from snow white to a rich magenta-pink. They are fully edible and make grand additions to bagged store-bought salads.

Like snow peas? Plant them and enjoy both those tender pods and the equally edible leaves raw in salads or stir-fries. For the most food per foot of garden row, sow the irresistibly crunchy-sweet sugar snap peas either the modern dwarfs that need no trellis or the old original with 4-foot vines. Harvest the tender new pea-flavored leaves and tendrils until the pods form. These pods are stringless and filled with crisp, plump peas that rarely make it to my kitchen. It's hard to not just stand there in my peaceful garden tossing the whole pods into my mouth!

I never grow English peas, even though they'll grow here just fine, because they need to be shucked, and after the pods are discarded it seems I get very little food.

Two winters ago I bought a 1-pound bag of dried green peas at an Indian market and planted them out of curiosity. They turned out to be the tasty pea "Novella" that has replaced nearly all of its leaves with very curly tendrils used in stir-fries and salads. The pods are of the English type: tender when very young and eaten like a snow pea, but when mature they must be shucked. As always, I ate nearly all of them raw while standing in the garden.

Many transplants from the North sorely miss old-fashioned non-edible "sweet peas" and the heavenly perfume they exude. By the 1970s that amazing fragrance was lost by breeders in search of new colors and bigger blooms. But luckily, the wild species was rediscovered on the island of Sicily, and some heirloom varieties were tracked down too and now appear on ordinary seed racks and in catalogs. Winter and spring offer Floridians a chance to experience a quality of scent like no other flower: sultry, spicy, sweet and soulful. Just one cluster of those elegant blooms will perfume a whole room.

Some modern hybrids have brought back some fragrance due to new breeding work, but my heart still swoons most over two very old strains. The magenta and pink-and-white "Painted Lady" boasts an astonishingly spicy and sensuous perfume that startles visitors to my gardens year after year. Or dip your nose into the brooding deep-blue and plum 17th century heirloom sweet pea "Matucana," introduced into England by the Sicilian monk Franciscus Cupani, and breathe deep. Some catalogs offer this treasure under the name "Cupani."

I rarely grow the modern hybrid sweet peas despite their larger blooms and much broader color range because I have not met one yet that can match the scent of those two older strains.

Always pick plenty of bouquets to keep the vines blooming until the heat returns. Let the last crop ripen into tan pods and harvest the seeds in labeled envelopes to grow the next winter season.

All I am saying is give peas a chance in your garden, and try three sowings per season: one now that the cool-down has begun, another in December, and a last one in February for a steady stream of delicious pods, tasty tender leaves and astonishingly sweet flowers.

John A. Starnes Jr., born in Key West, is an avid organic gardener and rosarian who studies, collects, cultivates and hybridizes roses for Florida. He can be reached at johnastarnes@msn.com.

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Seed source

Thompson & Morgan Seed Catalogue: toll-free 1-800-274-7333; www.thompson-morgan.com.

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Prepping for peas

Now through February is the ideal planting time for peas. A frost won't hurt them, but a hard freeze might.

Add plenty of bagged compost to your sandy soil, then a 1-inch layer of dried dog food, and if you have highly acidic inland soil, also apply a light sprinkling of dolomitic limestone like Parmesan cheese on spaghetti. Turn it all under. Water deeply, then let the soil "rest" for two weeks so the dog food can disintegrate (and cease to attract raccoons and squirrels). Peas actually like "sweet soil" that is pH neutral, so only coastal gardeners need add that compost.

Feed the peas once a month with a good drench of "fish emulsion" from a garden center. Three tablespoons per gallon of water is fine.

[Last modified November 1, 2007, 16:48:28]