Snow peas are an incredibly popular vegetable to grow at home in your own garden they provide masses of pods that are incredibly sweet when compared to what you get from your local grocery store. However, if you haven’t grown snow peas before you may be wondering how many pods do you get from a single plant.
A single snow pea plant will typically produce somewhere between 20 to 25 pods per plant in a single season according to a recent 2021 study that looked at 7 different types of snow peas. This equates to a weight of approximately 1lb per plant. For a family of four that is eating them regularly, we recommend planting 40 to 50 plants.
40 to 50 plants may seem like a lot, however, they can fit easily into a single 3 to 4 ft line of seeds that will take up relatively little space as they can be planted against a fence. To maximize how long you have snow peas in the garden it is recommended that you do two and sometimes three separate sowing in a single year.
The first sowing of the year is typically done at the start of the growing season in lake winter and typically will produce a harvest in mid to late spring. The second harvest should be sown in mid-summer with a harvest occurring in autumn and third sowing can also be completed if you have relatively mild winters in early autumn.
The reason for the timing of the sowings is because snow peas, like all peas, prefer to be grown in the cooler parts of the year, which is typically in spring and autumn, and in some cases where you have mild winters they can even produce at in winter as well.
If you live in a location where the winter is relatively mild the third sowing in autumn is particularly beneficial because it allows the snow peas to grow throughout the winter and they will flower in early spring giving you a much earlier harvest.
How Long Do Snow Peas Take To Produce Pods
Irrespective of the variety that you grow typically you can expect snow peas to take around 100 to 110 days to reach the point at which they are flowering. These flowers will convert to pods 3 to 3 weeks later in most cases and you typically received your harvest around 120 to 130 days after seeds have been sown.
The plants will continue to produce pods until the weather either gets too hot or too cold which typically means that temperatures below 40F and above 80F will be when the plant will cease to flower.
Where Is The Best Place To Get Snow Pea Seeds
The place that we would recommend to buy seeds is seeds now which is an online seed provider that stocks only heirloom variety vegetable seeds. They have a very large range of unusual seeds which are often not found at other seed stockists and they are also relatively cheap. To check out their store click on the link below.
Visit Seeds Now For A Wide Range Of Low-Cost Seeds
If you are unfamiliar with the term heirloom varieties that simply means that they are open-pollinated varieties that are relatively old. Open-pollinated varieties are advantageous for home gardeners because you can collect the seeds for the following year which means that you only have to buy the seeds once theoretically.
The more modern hybrid varieties, which are often designated by having the name hybrid in the title or the term F1, cannot be relied upon to be true to type because they are genetically unstable. This means that the second generation of seeds, ie see the ones that you can collect, potentially will produce a different variety of plants.
How To Grow Snow Peas
Snow peas are extremely easy to grow and can be planted either in seed trays or directly into the garden. Typically most gardeners will sow directly into the garden unless the weather is still extremely cold or there is no space in the garden at the time when you want to sow.
However, if you do want to get an early crop in the season you can plant them approximately 6 to 8 weeks prior to the first frost indoors which will get them going relatively quickly. How early you plant the seeds will be highly dependent upon the climate in which you live. If you have an extremely cold winter you may have to plant the seeds a few weeks later.
When planting the seeds into a seed tray it is best to use a modular seed tray with individual cells. Start by filling that seed tray up with good quality seed raising mixture and then firm the soil into the individual cells to form solid plugs.
The reason that this is recommended is that when the seed are transplanted out into the garden they will come out as a solid single piece which will reduce root disturbance.
When planting the seeds I recommend putting in two seeds per cell at a depth of approximately 1 inch. The snow peas will typically take anywhere between 7 to 14 days to come up and within a few weeks, they will reach a height of approximately 3 to 4 inches which is the point at which they can be planted out into the garden approximately a couple of inches apart.
However, if you sow directly into the garden it is best to wait until the weather is beginning to improve though it is not absolutely essential to wait until there are no longer frosts in your area because snow peas will tolerate frosty conditions.
Typically, the easiest way to plant the seeds quickly is to create a furrow that is approximately an inch deep and sprinkle the seeds liberally into it aiming for the seeds to be approximately an inch apart. The seeds can then be covered over and watered.
As snow peas can get anywhere between 3 and 6 ft tall depending upon the particular variety that you grow it is important to run a trellis along the furrow where you have planted the seeds as this will ensure that the plants have the support they need as they are developing.
As it is likely that you will be planting a lot of seeds it is impractical to tie each individual plant to the structure so the easiest way is to run a horizontal line of string across the front of the trellis to push the plants onto the support to ensure that they remain upright. As the season progresses you may find that you need to do this multiple times.
Harvesting Snow Peas
As mentioned earlier in the article it will typically take around 100 days before the plant begins to flower in favorable conditions at this point you need to start to keep a close eye on them. The snow peas are likely to be ready within a few weeks and they typically can be picked at any stage once they reach a length of approximately 3 to 4 inches and are best eaten immediately.
Once the snow peas begin to produce pods you need to visit the plants at least every couple of days to pick what is there from your garden. Picking the pods regularly will encourage the plant to continue to flower and produce new pods until the weather is no longer favorable.
When this occurs it is best to remove the plant from the garden as it will not yield any more pods and put something else in. However, when doing this is a good idea to pick any remaining pods that have become overripe and put them aside somewhere to dry out. These pods will allow you to regrow the plant next time without having to buy further seeds.
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