Please Pass the Peas

 I needed to tackle the job of picking some of my peas this week.  I've been getting a few here and there, but a lot of peapods have plumped up recently and I wanted to get them picked before the holiday.  The warm weather has helped the vines to really take off.  This pic shows the vines have outgrown the fence and are reaching up into the sky.  I left quite a few pods to fatten up for a later picking. 

 This shows how many peas I picked in about 45 minutes.  This is not a small basket. 

 I planted 2 varieties of shelling peas, along with a snowpea variety.  The top picture is "Frosty".  The pods are slightly smaller, the vines are shorter, the peas are a good size, but boy are these peas SWEET.  I popped one in my mouth and it was fantastic! 

 The "Wando" variety is quite a bit bigger.  The pods are huge, the peas are huge, the vines got over 2 feet taller than the "Frosty" vines.  They are still delicious, just not as sweet as the "Frosty" peas. 

 Last year, I lost a lot of vine growth to rabbits snipping off pieces of the top before I got my garden fenced in.  This year, they were safe and sound inside the fence.  I also grew them on a much better trellis system than before.  You can see I got a really large bowl of peas out of this one picking.  I also spent about 2 hours shelling peas in order to get them frozen while they were very fresh.  With peas, freshness matters.  The peas happen to be sitting on my copy of "Super Natural Every Day" by Heidi Swanson, which I would recommend. 

I rolled all my peas in inoculant this year and presprouted them in trays of water before planting them to reduce seed rot.  I can see a big difference in the amount of peas I got this season.  In our house, fresh peas are like late spring/early summer's candy, and we eat almost as many as we pick.  There are a lot worse things you could eat, that's for sure. 

Do you grow peas in your garden?  Do any make it to the freezer or do you eat them all fresh?  I'd love to hear about it...