Peas- Mr Fothergill's Onward

Mr Fothergill's Pea- variety Onward.  Plump and juicy peas it says and that is what we hope for.  If my peas turn out as smooth and insanely shiny as they do here I will be impressed.  Methinks somebody went a bit crazy with the lighting and dodge tool in photoshop...

You may have noticed in my post on broad beans that there were randomly four pea seedlings in my tray of beans.  I mentioned it enough so you should have done, but I did not explain why.  I think I had sowed fifteen broad beans across two trays containing a mixture of sweet peas and beans and had six spots left so just bunged in some peas to make use of the space.  Obviously only four came up, but then I sowed another tray of peas to make up the numbers, and like the broad beans virtually every one came up which was good.  The trick I think to getting a good germination result is to pay attention to the sow by date on the packet.  I am the type of person who will happily eat something past its use by date, I fully believe that if tastes and smells all right your good to go.  I will even go so far as to scrape mould off things like jam to eat the stuff below.  A little mould never hurt anyone.  Anyway I digress, turns out the same attitude can not be applied to pea and beans as last year I sowed a whole bunch and got one lonely, miserable and lets face it, pointless broad bean.  Nobody’s going to get fat on that.  They were out of date, not by much but apparently they are a little pedantic and if the packet says 2012 then there is no playing ball in 2013.  Seeing as they were sown in exactly the same way I can only think of this as being the reason.

I have obviously got very blasé about seeds coming up as other than those in my broad bean post I forgot to take any pictures.  Although god knows why because my seed production has been a complete disaster this year, more on that to follow!  The packet of peas came again from Chelsea and for some unknown reason I plumped for a variety of marrowfat peas rather than just the usual garden peas.  Having just done some internet research it says these are left to dry naturally in the field and are used to make mushy peas, which I did already know.  That wasn’t really my plan for these I have to admit.  I was planning on letting them fatten and ripen and then whip them off and it them solid.  I presume this is possible, I guess I will find out in due course!  The variety is Onward, which seems a strange thing to call a pea considering it doesn’t go on to anywhere, it tends to stay put in the ground where you planted it.  Obviously I don’t know how it tastes yet but I can confirm it’s a good germinator.

As I didn’t photograph them until I had them in the ground here is a little snapshot of my pea patch with my peas freshly in.  This would probably have been around late April early May time, it certainly doesn’t look as neat and orderly now.

My pea patch, complete with helpful labels.  Hopefully next year I might be able to expand into more varieties or different types.