Sugar Snap Peas Sprouting – From the Vegetable Garden

The earliest vegetables to emerge from our vegetable garden are the sugar snap peas. I planted them back in February but the cold temperatures kept the peas from coming up as early as I hoped. I planted two 3’x4′ raised beds with the peas in the hopes that we would enjoy a large crop this year. Several of the seeds I planted are now emerging which means the vegetable garden is now officially in season!

My daughters both love eating the sugar snap peas right from the garden. If you are wondering how to get your kids to eat vegetables and enjoy gardening think sugar snap peas. Carrots, cherry tomatoes, and radishes are great too. Last year we had very few pods that actually made it in the house – most were nibbled to nothing in the garden. They were just too delicious to save for later!

Sugar snap peas are a legume, like beans, which means they have a very useful property – nitrogen fixing! Legumes form a symbiotic relationship with bacteria that likes to make nitrogen as a byproduct. It’s great for the legumes and any other plant you want to put in the same soil after the sugar snap peas are done for the spring. That’s one reason why the gardening technique called Three Sisters works so well. The corn likes the nitrogen and the pole beans like to climb the corn stalks. The corn and the beans really enjoy each others company!

Sugar snap peas like the cool temperatures and should be finished when the warm season plants are going in the garden. The nitrogen fixing quality makes them a good first crop to plant in any garden. Just make sure you trellis the snap peas because they do like to climb!