SUGAR SNAP PEAS, A GARDEN FAVORITE

Some vegetables just naturally are better straight from the home garden.  Tomato and sweet corn are two.  The third is Sugar Snap Peas.  If you haven't grown this vegetable, you just don't know what you are missing.

There are several varieties you can try, with names like Sugar Daddy, Sugar Lace, and Sugar Sprint.  They are sweet and good (many are stingless) but my favorite is still the Sugar Snap.

They do have to be planted early, or late, as your climate dictates.  In northern climes, early planting is a bonus since gardeners can't wait to get their hands in the soil and get things growing.  Plant the seeds directly into the garden as soon as the ground is workable in the spring.  If the soil sticks to your hoe, it is too early.

These peas, like the English peas, require cool weather to make a crop.  Most peas take around sixty days to mature, so you will want to have them ready for harvest before the temperature climbs in your area.  When the summer heats up, the vines fire yellow from the base and the pods turn starchy.  Then it's time to pull them up and send them to the compost heap.  You can also plant them in late summer for a fall crop.

In my section of South Carolina, we plant peas Thanksgiving weekend for an extra early spring crop.  They withstand temperatures down to twenty degrees Fahrenheit.  They come up during winter warm spells, stop growing when the weather turns cold and icy, and then suddenly get growing in earnest, blossom, and fuit in March or April.

Like all legumes, Sugar Snap Peas have the added benefit of pulling nitrogen from the air and trapping it in nodules on their roots.  You might have to fertilize the young plants, but after that, the peas will manufacture their own nitrogen.  Just think, a vegetable sweet as candy that can feed itself.  It gets my vote for veggie of the year.

These are the peas you eat whole, pod and all, without having to shell.  They are delicious raw, roasted, or stir-fried.  Harvest them just as the pods begin to swell.  If the pods get full and hard, the sweetness will have turned to starch.

I admit to being a lazy harvester.  The strings have to be removed from Sugar Snaps, just like from the old-fashioned string beans.  Since I would much rather be in the garden than sitting with a bowl in my lap, I string them as I pick.  I pinch off most of the pea end from the plant toward the top of the pod, and then pull the string off by turning the pea pod.  The string stays on the plant.  Then I break the other end and pull the string from the other side of the pod, as I drop it in my basket.  Voila!  Peas all ready to be rinsed and cooked, if they make it to the kitchen.

Another confession:  Rarely do all of the peas make it to the kitchen.  They are so sweet and crunchy right from the vine.  I eat as many as I put in the basket.

Gardeners are a generous bunch and usually love to share.  Be forewarned, this is not a vegetable like zucchini or yellow squash.  If, in a weak moment, you let friends try the Sugar Snaps, they will be back for more.  Plant plenty.

-- Posted by Anne K. Moore  May 6, 2007--