Pest-Free Peas
Chris shows how to keep on top of tricky pests munching their way through different pea crops this summer…
Peas are a really easy and popular crop to grow, but if you have ever opened a few pea pods only to find maggots munching through your tender peas you will know how infuriating this can be when trying to fill a dish for your lunch!
I always used to sow my peas during April and early May and found maggoty peas caused by the larvae of the pea moth a real problem. The female pea moths lay their eggs during June and July during the main flowering period for April sowings. Eggs are laid on the developing pods and the caterpillars bore into the pods and eat the developing peas.
Gone are the days of powerful systemic insecticides for amateur use, not as I would use them as the whole point in growing your own peas I feel is to avoid the pesticides used on commercial crops destined for the frozen pea market.
Home gardeners can use physical barriers of horticultural fleece or insect mesh but I have never found them successful for peas as sooner or later the wind will very effectively remove them! Peas are self-fertile so don’t need to be bee pollinated so this is definitely an option if you can secure the crop cover well.
For me, sowing later has real benefits in avoiding pea moth damage. For the last two years I have sown on June 30th and have had 100% maggot free peas. Variety choice is really important though, I grow ‘Oasis’ which is an early cropping maincrop cultivar, and the very disease resistant ‘Terrain’. During the very wet summer of 2024 Terrain remained downy and powdery mildew free and cropped over a long cropping period from September right through to November – plenty for fresh use and the freezer. ‘Terrain’ is really a must for late sowings and in my opinion is a real game changer for disease free peas.
Peas always follow my previous years maincrop potatoes so as this crop is heavily fertilised there are ample reserves of phosphate and potassium in the soil. Pease being a legume make their own Nitrogen so there is no requirement for any additional fertiliser. I simply dig the soil over, rake level and mark out a 600 mm (2 foot wide bed) I find growing in wide beds with a 75 cm fence down each side of the row both maximises cropping and growing space.
Across the bed I take out drills about 4 inches apart and around 2 inches deep with a Dutch hoe and sow between 10-12 peas across the row. This is repeated for the whole length of the bed – it’s a long job with a 12-metre row, but I find this works better for me than the traditional flat-bottomed drill which is often used for peas.
On completion, the soil is quite uneven so it is important to very lightly rake level and then just tamp down with the rake. This is principally to help deter blackbirds who will readily dig up the bed to find the peas to feed their young. Have some horticultural fleece at hand and cover the bed if you see any disturbance on the surface or you will lose the majority of them. The ‘current’ culprit, a male blackbird we have nicknamed ‘Peaeater’ for the last couple of years has run up and down the fleece as I’m laying it trying to find a way under it, but there have been lots of predecessors and all probably related!
Last job is to water well until germination if the soil is dry, which during July will be very rapid. From germination, I generally throw some fleece over the seedlings for a few days to stop Wood Pigeons eating the new shoots and then put up the support fences when growth is a couple of inches high.
The three things I always notice with summer sown peas is firstly, that germination is so much better as peas don’t like cold spring soils where many simply rot, secondly, they grow away and mature really fast with picking during September and thirdly maggoty peas are nowhere to be seen, and as a final bonus I have found that the other main pest of peas, the pea weevil, the small weevil that notches the edges of the leaves is also much reduced with later sowings.
Chris Jones
Based in Shropshire Chris has many years experience both in growing projects of his own and passing on his expert outdoor knowledge to others through growing and gardening societies. Keep an eye on our blog posts and newsletters for his seasonal articles to keep you well informed on all things outdoors.
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