Pea belongs to the legume family, is a herbaceous annual with a stem of 60 — 300 cm, depending on the variety. A vegetable is a pod with grains, superior in nutritional value to potatoes. Pea protein contains soluble fiber and essential amino acids found only in beef. Peas contain sugar, vitamins, and many other ingredients. The stems are a nutritious animal feed and an excellent mulch. The roots structure the soil and saturate it with a biological form of nitrogen bound by nodule bacteria.

What you need to know when choosing seed material

There are many varieties of peas. They are created for different climatic conditions. The peculiarity of the plant is to withstand low temperatures after germination to minus six, poor growth and development in hot weather. Therefore, varieties are recommended for each climatic zone, with the corresponding growing season. They are used for spring planting and sown in August to eat peas in the fall, freeze or preserve.

Sugar Peas

There are sugar and peeling varieties. Starch predominates in shelling peas, the fruits are dried, then used in cooking. Sugar varieties have an excellent taste when fresh. Green bivalve blades with unripe seeds are considered commercial.

The pods of sugar varieties of peas do not have a parchment layer inside the flaps. The shoulder blade is edible, used for freezing along with beans. But there are fewer sugars in these peas than in tall and short brain varieties.

Among sugar varieties, Premium is considered the king, due to the taste characteristics of the fruit. A 40 cm high honey pod will please with fully edible pods 55-65 days after germination. Growing on poles, Baby Sugar will yield a yield of 2.5 kg/m2 of gourmet peas and edible pod shells.

Brain and smooth

When dry, pea fruits can be shriveled and smooth. Dried to full ripeness, the pod is called shelling. It has smooth grains of yellow color. Dry peas, taken green, will give an unpleasant blackness in the soup. Therefore, in the commercial production of pea flour, grits, grains for soup, only peeling varieties are used.

Dried grains of brain varieties have a wrinkled shell. In green form, they contain a lot of sugar. When dried, sugar turns into starch, moisture evaporates, the grain becomes wrinkled. For country cultivation, you need to buy brain varieties — they have a larger supply of components useful to humans.

Tall and short

Peas are called tall, which climb along a support to a height of up to 3 meters, but most varieties have a maximum growth of 1.5-2.0 meters. From plants you can create a hedge on the sunny side, they are productive, in large pods there are up to 10 pieces of beans of excellent taste. Summer residents should be interested in varieties Velikan, Zhegalova 112, Sugar snap. The mustachioed nannies is included in the assortment of tall ones, but reaches 80 cm in height, grows without supports, clinging to each other. It has edible peas and soft shoulder blades.

Low-growing varieties do not fall, clinging to each other and minimal supports. It is they who are grown in the beds, framed by support stakes, covered with twine around the perimeter. The height of the stems is 40-70 cm. Among them there are early-ripening varieties, with outstanding yields, tasty fresh, frozen, canned. Buy Miracle of Kelvedon and be surprised by the yield of 1.5 kg/m2 of a short growing variety. Early Gribovsky grows to a height of 40 cm, a pod up to 10 cm carries 8 peas, the taste of the fruit is excellent. Varieties are early ripe, cold-resistant.

Early varieties

Peas are valued by summer residents as early vitamin greens. Plants give a harvest 1.5-2 months after planting. These include the variety Aria, Bartessa, Primrose. As a rule, these are low-growing, cold-resistant plants with 2-3 pods per nest. Gardeners fell in love with varieties Alpha and Ambrosia with the first blades after 1.5 months and resistance to most pea diseases.

Selection of varieties by region

In all regions, peas are an industrial crop, grown in fields in crop rotation. Zoned seeds — those that are adapted to each climatic zone are recommended for cultivation as the main variety.

1. Eastern and Western Siberia — Altai emerald variety.

2. Moscow region, Central regions — ideal growing conditions for canning varieties Zaznayka, Gloriosa, Children’s joy.

3. South of Russia — the Gregor variety has become a favorite, non-lodging, drought-resistant and sharpened for mechanical harvesting.

4. The southwestern region is a breadbasket for canned varieties and dry peas. The Minsk Grain is considered the best.

Here are just examples. In each region, there are dozens of released varieties for commercial and home cultivation.

Rejection and check of seed germination

The leaves and grains of peas have many pests. Even peas bought in a specialized store need to be carefully examined and disinfected.

Pour the seeds into a solution of table salt (1 tbsp / l) for 2 minutes. Throw away everything that will float, wash the seeds from salt, and dry. Germination of pea seeds lasts 5-6 years. If in doubt, check.

Select a dozen seeds, soak them in water for 2 hours, then wrap them in a damp cloth, put them in a warm place for germination, not forgetting to check the humidity. How many peas will sprout, such is the germination rate in%.

Seed preparation before sowing

Heating the seeds by the battery for 2 hours will allow you to get friendly shoots if the seeds are sown not sprouted. Sowing with dry seeds is carried out in early spring in cold ground. Peas without preplanting will sprout according to the laws of nature, will begin development at a favorable time.

Peas are sown in the gardens of villagers and summer residents, knowing for sure that they will protect seedlings and will not dry out the soil during seed germination. You can use pre-sprouted or swollen peas.

It is possible to accelerate the seedlings of pea seeds by stimulating treatments with solutions of trace elements, epin, humate, diluted according to the instructions. Protection against pea weevil will be the treatment of seeds in a solution of boric acid (1g / 5l) at a temperature of 40 ⁰within 5 minutes.

Complete seed preparation with germination:

1. Soak the seed in a saucer, the water should cover the seeds for 10-12 hours, but change the water 3-4 times.

2. Wrap the swollen seeds in a damp cloth, put in a warm place, moisten, check for unsprouted sprouts.

3. It is better to plant peas in the ground until the roots break through the shell. Delay in sowing — put the seeds in the refrigerator, but plant as soon as possible.

The requirement for the composition of the soil, preparing the beds, sowing

The planting bed is located in an open place protected from the wind. Predecessors can be any plants except legumes. But it is better if phosphorus-potassium fertilizers were applied to the soil last season and the earth is neutral, pH 6.5-7.5.

On thin soil, add a little matured compost, a matchbox of superphosphate and a tablespoon of potassium sulfate per 1 m2 for autumn digging. Chemical fertilizers will replace a liter of wood ash. In the spring, on a pre-prepared bed, grooves are made every 15-30 cm and peas are laid out every 5-8 cm. The planting pattern of tall varieties is sparse, low — compact. Sowing depth 4 — 8 cm, depending on the structure of the soil.

Depending on the height of the stems, rods for support are pre-installed on the garden bed or around the perimeter. Peas will climb up, clinging with their antennae.

If the soil for peas has not been filled with fertilizer mixtures since autumn, in the spring a matchbox of ammonium nitrate, potassium salt and superphosphate is added per 1 m2 of beds. Sowing can be done when the earth warms up by 5 degrees at a depth of 5 cm.

Early spring, enough moisture is retained in the soil, it is not necessary to water the crops on dry seeds. You will need to cover the landing with film or agril from hungry birds, mice.

The earth warmed up and dried up. When sowing swollen or dry seeds, the bed is watered abundantly along the grooves before and after sowing the seeds. Planting is mulched or covered with agrofiber, which must be removed when the first seedlings appear after 7-14 days. It is impossible to allow the formation of a dry crust over the crops.

Pea care

Seedlings and growing peas are loosened and weeded as long as possible. High stems, if necessary, are tied to supports. Usually the stems themselves cling with antennae to any ledge. Plants are self-pollinating.

Peas are watered until flowering every 7 days, water consumption is 1 bucket per square, under the root. After flowering, moisture charging is needed after 2-3 days. After watering, loosening of the grooves is necessary in order for the soil to breathe.

In summer, green top dressing is made from nettle and dandelion. During the period of mass flowering, peas are fed with nitrophoska (1 tablespoon / 10 l), at the rate of 5 l / m2. After harvesting, up to 30% of the nitrogen in the soil is converted into a biological form due to the symbiosis of peas and nitrogen-fixing bacteria — a gift to the next vegetable in the crop rotation.

Spraying with repellent compounds from garlic, tomato tops during the flowering period will protect the plant from the main pest — the pea codling moth. Processing on the leaves is carried out in the evening or in cloudy weather.

Harvest when the shoulder blades are swollen, but remain green and smooth, with juicy walls. Later, the sugars turn into starch, the beans become coarse.

Pea care mistakes

It is not recommended to treat early-ripening plants from fungal diseases with copper-containing preparations. It is necessary to use Fitosporin-M, potassium permanganate solution, folk remedies. Remove diseased plants before they have infected the entire plantation. Pre-sowing seed treatment, observing crop rotation and growing peas before the onset of hot weather will protect against the development of diseases.

From folk remedies for the prevention against fungal diseases, an extract from the ground part of thistle is effective. You can find the plant in abandoned areas.

Protection against pests without the use of chemical insecticides is carried out with Bitoxibacillin and Fitoverm, prepared according to the instructions.

From folk remedies use infusions for spraying:

1. onion peel, tomato tops — 300 g of the mass is brewed with 5 liters of water, insisted for 2 days;

2. dandelion greens 300 g in 0.5 l of vodka (alcohol-containing liquids can be used) leave for a day, dilute with 15 l of water.

Features of growing peas in a greenhouse

Peas in an unheated greenhouse are grown when other plants are warm in seedling boxes. The ground under a transparent cover thaws early, in March conditions are created for planting super early greenery. In March, the earth is ready to receive the first inhabitants. Use brain varieties

An important feature of growing peas per shoulder blade in a greenhouse is that it is necessary to organize abundant watering and daytime ventilation. In the spring during the day, the temperature in the circuit is above 30 degrees, the peas will not grow — you need to sow it from the north side, organize ventilation. Early varieties Berkut, Yantar, Premium grow well in the greenhouse.

At the end of summer, when the heat subsides and the greenhouse is empty, you can sow varieties of medium ripening, Viola, Voskhod, Emerald. Temperature +(10-14) ⁰comfortable for an adult plant. No pollinators needed.

In regions with warm winters, peas are sown in the greenhouse in winter with dry seeds. If the crops are not eaten by mice, you can feast on shoulder blades in early summer. For winter crops, seeds of Norley, Oregon Sugar Pod are recommended. Plants up to 1 m high.

Peas are sown in a greenhouse as green manure. The plant enriches the soil with nitrogen. Green mass is useful as mulch or compost. Seeds are sown densely, the tops are cut in bloom, you can close up the crushed green mass into the soil for digging.

Growing vitamin green peas on the windowsill

The benefits and biological value of sprouts as vitamin greens have long been known. Peas can be driven all year round. Seeds are soaked and germinated in the substrate. Seedlings take food from peas. Fleshy greens are cut with 3-5 real leaves, used in salads. You can grow peas in any soil, the seeds are sown densely.