The great pea experiment.

[Odsox]

I was asked a few months ago if you ate the pea plant tops (sprouts), would it kill the plant or would it go on to produce a crop.
Well I didn't know as I don't eat pea sprouts, but being of a curious nature I decided to find out.

I planted 2 Meteor peas in a spare piece of ground and when they emerged I cut the top off one when it was about 2" tall.
The untouched one grew as normal while the cut one just sat and sulked for several weeks and then produced two shoots which quite soon caught the other one up.
The result was that the untouched one produced 12 pods and the cut one produced 11 pods but about 2 weeks later.

So the answer is "yes, probably", you can get two harvests from a pea row, one harvest of shoots followed by a full crop of peas, provided you can wait an extra two weeks for them.

Bear in mind though that I only tried 2 plants and one variety and I could have struck lucky, so if you try this and destroy your row of peas, don't blame me too much.

[grahamhobbs]

Sounds like a good technique to spread the harvest and more consistant than what the slugs do for mine.

[Millymollymandy]

Interesting! It was me who asked Tony if this was possible, because of Alys Fowler saying grow peas just to eat the shoots. I wanted to know if the plant would continue to grow and produce pea pods otherwise it seemed a bit of a waste of good pea seeds just for one measly little sprout per pea.

Well mine were in a pot and it was during the hot weather so after picking the initial shoots, although a few managed to sprout a bit more and even produce a couple of flowers that was about it then they died off. They were really tightly packed into a pot though as originally it was just for shoots.

I think I'll stick to growing peas in the normal way because the shoots didn't taste of anything and I'd rather eat lettuce.

Thanks for doing the experiment Tony.

[Green Aura]

I suppose it's quite handy if you've got some really early peas on the go. But you might have some salad leaves pickable by then anyway