Mothers were right: Give peas a chance

Peas are good for you. Your mother was right.

One of the easiest vegetables to grow, “Pisum sativum L.,” or the snow pea, is one of nature’s true whole foods.

Raw or cooked, you can readily consume the pea pods, the young shoots, tendrils and the leaves. A half cup of snow peas has only 55 calories packed with three grams of fiber and protein, 10 grams of guilt-free carbs, only one-quarter gram of fat, 13 milligrams of vitamin C and plenty of vitamin A.

Snow peas add vertical interest to the garden along with pretty flowers that can be used as an edible garnish. Eat only vegetable pea flowers and not sweet pea flowers.

While most gardeners are familiar with standards like the dwarf Oregon sugar or its taller cousin mammoth sugar with their white flowers, there are many other interesting varieties on the market.

New this year is golden sweet. With its bright lemon-yellow pods and two-toned purple flowers on tall vines, it can mature in about 70 days.

Originally from India, golden sweet may take offense to a cool, wet summer, but I think they’ll be worth a try. If you have a surplus, the overripe pods can be shelled and the tan and purple-flecked seeds can be dried out for soups.

Resources for golden sweet peas can be found at Seed Savers Exchange (Seedsavers.org), Sand Hill Preservation (Sandhillpreservation.com) and Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds (Rareseeds.com).

Less is definitely more with a snowbird plant from Burpee Seeds (Burpee.com). Small at only 18 inches of vine and 2- to 3- inch pods in clusters of two to three, snowbirds are a very early variety, maturing at just 58 days. This pea is perfect for small containers, raised beds or mini-gardens. Snowbirds don’t like the hot weather, which makes it a perfect pea for our unpredictable summers.

Kitazawa Seed Co. (Kitazawaseed.com),is one of my favorite Asian vegetable seed companies. Its Taichung 11 pea is a later maturing, compact grower with pink flowers that mature to 3- or 4-inch pods.

A variety grown for its greens rather than its peas, the Ursui pea matures in about 65 days. Stir fry the top leaves and young tendrils with mushrooms, green onion, red peppers and a sprinkle of sesame seeds for a fast lunch. These tender greens can add a tasty punch to salads as well.

The Atitlan is a waist-high variety with a tendency toward double pod sets. Another later-maturing variety, it can be grown with or without a trellis, although with our wind it’s probably a good idea to do some trellising anyway. These open-pollinated peas can be found at Johhny’s Selected Seeds (Johhnyseeds.com).

It is interesting to note that it’s only the white-flowered varieties of the pea family used for animal feed.

The tannins found in the colored-flowering varieties apparently reduce the digestibility of starch and protein. I don’t have any farm animals in my pedigree, so I’m not sure how that bit of trivia will affect my diet. I do know I prefer color in my garden and why waste valuable garden space on purple-flowering Sweet peas when you could grow a variety that is edible as well as ornamental?

Enjoy snow peas in your salads now while you wait for your seed orders to get here. They add crunch, flavor and more nutrients to your green salads in winter than lettuce, which has minimal food value beyond fiber unless you pull it right out of the garden.

Try making your winter salads from carrots, snow peas, red cabbage, green onions, toasted pumpkin and sunflower seeds, and use the lettuce as a garnish instead.

You can start your peas indoors in pots, gently tweezing out the 4-inch seedlings and planting outside in a trench. Or direct sow when the soil is tillable.

Peas are legumes that feed the soils as well as the soul, because they are nitrogen fixers.

Don’t let the moose eat the vines this fall and put them in the compost pile or dig them into the garden bed. Chopping the vines with a shredder or running the lawnmower over them will help break the woody parts down. And they can be used to mulch the beds for the lazy gardener’s compost.

The venerable pea is one of our most ancient food sources, originating about 10,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent in what is now called Iraq. A few hundred years later the Snow pea ancestor turned up on the Thai-Burma border.

It’s ironic that our most recent wars have been in that part of the world where our ancestors first gave peas a chance.

Brooke Heppinstall, artist and gardener, is the owner of Wool Wood Studio & Gardens, an art studio and nursery specializing in Alaska-grown perennials and shrubs. Visit online at Woolwood.blogspot.com.