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Oh My Darling Little Sweet Pea

Green Garden Peas

By Farmer Terri Carter

September 4, 2014

Ever wonder about those little green peas that you see in the store. What are they called?  Are they sweet peas, English Peas, snow peas or sugar snap peas.  So many peas and which one is which? Are the all the same or what?  Let me shed some light on the peas.  The outer green shell is call the pod and what is inside the pod is the pea or seed that we eat or plant.  There are 3 basic kinds of little green peas.

The English or sweet pea as we know it is what most of us in the States grew up on. It's the first pea most of us would eat and like especially with some fresh mashed potatoes.  We usually got them in a can and some brands were better than other brands depending on what you could afford at that time.  I tended to like the one in the silver can.  The English or sweet pea is the only one of the 3 kinds of peas that you shell to eat.  This one you remove the pod and eat the plump green pea inside and dis-guard the pod.  It can go in the compost pile.  The English pea is seldom found fresh and that is because they tend to lose flavor after 3 or 4 day and thus not having the ability to stand up to long shipping from farm to store. If you want some then you should grow them yourself to get the true taste.

Snow Peas are the green flat peas that you often see in stir-fry.  It is never shelled and the pea inside is small and can be seen and felt inside. It is sweet and can be eaten raw.

Sugar Snap Peas are basically a cross between the English pea and the snow pea. It looks like the English pea but the difference is that you eat the entire pea. It tends to be sweet and crunchy.  It may have a string that you want to remove before eating or not. Both snow and sugar peas can be eaten cooked or raw and both have a little string that you can remove if you like. The English pea has the most nutrients in it but all are good for you and have a good flavor.  

For more information and pics of the 3 varieties of peas mentioned here you can check out a pretty good blog post that I found.  http://www.thekitchn.com/whats-the-difference-between-snow-peas-sugar-snap-peas-and-english-peas-ingredient-intelligence-205118

Growing peas in your garden

People tend to be a bit confused as to when they should plant peas.  When you think peas, you think summer crop and that is the case with most of the beans and peas but not these little green gems.  They must have some cool temps to thrive.  They are not for the hot summer of The South.  Peas can be grown in the very early spring or fall.  The trick is to get them growing and make sure they live a nice cool life literally.  Most people put them out too late in the spring and they get too hot.  Then some people plant them in the summer with the tomatoes.  That is a bad idea.  Again think cool when you think of green peas.  That time when the seasons change is the time to plant them. It can be a fine line for deciding the perfect time for them.  Just remember that they will not produce and thrive in the heat.  In fact you can plant peas in the ground in the spring when the soil temp is only 45 degrees.  With that being said, I would already have my bed turned and ready to go as soon as spring hits that golden temp for them. It can be difficult to go out in the cold and prepare the spring bed so I suggest you have it ready to go in the fall and all you have to do is plant in the spring.  I even cover my bed to keep the weeds down in fall if I am not planting then and there.

If you want to learn more about peas and how to grow then then you can refer to someone that I love to refer gardeners to.  Walter Reeves is considered an expert and he has his own TV show on gardening too.  He is a Georgia gardener so his advice will be pertinent to our area. His blog will have the varieties that are best for this region. Select varieties that can tolerate some heat because you never really know what our weather will bring.   

http://www.walterreeves.com/food-gardening/pea-english-and-snap

As you start to plan your fall garden consider growing some of the green sweet pea varieties discussed here.  If you have never eaten a fresh sweet pea, you are in for a real treat.  I have eaten the sugar snap and snow peas and they are delicious from the garden. This fall, I will be planting all three.  Wonder if I will be able to tell the difference while they are growing.   If you want to start now then don’t be afraid go ahead and experiment with peas and then in the spring you will have a bit more knowledge and you can plant them again with the confidence that you know you can grow them from seeds and enjoy them.  That is what I plan to do.  I read and then I grow.  Sometimes reading is not enough and you must just go ahead and do it.  See what happens and then you have the experience for yourself and you are in turn a  better gardener for trying.  As they say, you won’t know unless you try.   Check out a great blog by my new garden mentor Amy Whitney of the UGA Cobb Extension Office.  She is a botanist and she knows gardening.  Happy Gardening Y’all.    http://atlantaveggies.blogspot.com/

Making Hoppin John at Mableton Farmers Market August 21, 2014

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My Bee Keeping Journey With GA Tech's Honeybee Project

I think I fell in love with the thought of becoming a real beekeeper sometime after I tasted really good honey from a local source.  There was a beehive set up at the community garden when I got there in 2011 .  I was interested in tasting real honey and was given the opportunity to sell some honey from the beehive at the garden.  The beekeeper said that I could sell her honey at the Mableton Farmers Market and for every jar sold Mary said that I could keep $1 from every sale.  I sold 5 jars and collected $4.  I dropped the price of the honey for one customer to convince them to buy it.  It was so good that I wanted the customer to have one.  I believe in buying very local honey.  I will never buy honey that I don't know the origin of.  Your honey should be from local bees in your community if at all possible.  It contains the good stuff that you need.  The bees have done all the work for you. .

I decided that I wanted to learn to be a beekeeper. I quickly learned that it can be difficult to find a mentor to teach you how to become a beekeeper.  I have been pretty lucky to find a really good mentor in Dr. Jennifer K. Leavey, professor at Georgia Tech and the Director of the Georgia Tech Honey Bee Project. She was kind enough to let me work and learn with them. It all started with an email asking to volunteer with her project.  I had to take a couple of intro classes from her to learn the basics of the life of honeybees and how to care for them and inspect the hive.  I read as much as I could and then came time to really get to see the bee hive.  It's located on top of a building on the Tech campus.  The day of the hive inspection was a spring day in April.  A rather hot day for April too.  We had been told by Dr. Leavey to wear light colored clothes. I forgot that and wore all black and Dr. Leavey looked at me as if to wonder how and why I would wear all black. I wear all black so much because it makes me look smaller and black matches black. Myself and the students went and got dressed in the beekeeping apparel.  I had to put an entire suit over my clothes and the veil. We went outside and started the hive inspection.  It was going well and the bees were doing really well after a very brutal winter for Georgia.  It had been an extremely cold winter this year but the bees were doing really well.

I started to get really hot.  It was a hot day, for early April.  I started to feel really tired.  I wished I could go lay down and take a nap.  Now why would I want to do that?  I just felt like I did. I started to walk to the door to go back inside and suddenly felt really weak and light headed.  I wanted a good drink of water too.  I felt that sleepy tired feeling again too.  Nobody noticed but I tried to go inside but I had to wait so they could check me to make sure no bees were stuck to my suit before I went back inside.  Someone said, "Turn around and raise your arms."  I did but felt myself not feeling like myself and I knew something was wrong.  I was about to pass out. I had on too many clothes, it was too hot, I had not eaten, I had not drank much water and I was in trouble.  Sometime you just gotta keep it real. I was gonna fall on my face in a few seconds.  I told the group, "Hey ya'll, I think I am going to fall out, I feel kinda sick."   Everyone was really nice, Dr Leavey went to get me some water and that really nice young man sat on the cool concrete floor of the lab with me. I though that was so nice of him to do that. Its the little things that count.  I sat for about 45
minutes and then I felt like wow, these dang bees done knocked the honey outta me.