How to grow heritage peas and support them with handmade hazel supports instead of plastic mesh
Eleanor Ashford
Growing heritage peas is like welcoming a slice of history into your garden. These traditional varieties offer not only delicious and diverse flavours but also a connection to our gardening past. By planting them, we honour the generations of gardeners who nurtured these same seeds, passing each season’s knowledge from soil-stained hand to soil-stained hand.
More than just a culinary delight, growing heritage peas is an act of sustainability. It’s about valuing biodiversity, reducing plastic in the garden, and creating beauty with natural materials. This journey invites us to make thoughtful choices, starting with the seeds we sow and the supports we create, weaving a tapestry that respects both the earth and its generous gifts.
Choosing Your Heritage Peas
Heritage peas come with their own unique stories, tales of Victorian kitchen gardens, wartime allotments, and rustic country cottages. When selecting your heritage pea varieties, consider what sparks your curiosity or what might link you to your garden’s past. Perhaps you’ll opt for the hearty flavour of Champion of England or the delicate sweetness of Victorian Colossal Climbing, each with its own tale to tell.
Sowing The Seeds
To sow your first peas is to embark on a slow-growing journey. Choose a bright, sunny spot with well-drained soil, enriched with organic matter. Before planting, soak the seeds overnight in water. This age-old technique softens their shells, encouraging quicker germination. While some gardeners favour starting peas in pots to protect against the all-too-curious nibblers of the garden, sowing directly into the ground is equally traditional, and perhaps a bit more romantic.
Plant your seeds in rows, spacing them about two inches apart and an inch deep. If you’ve ever sown anything as a child, the simplicity of peas takes you right back to that innocence, a reminder that gardening need not always be complicated to be rewarding.
Crafting Hazel Supports
As your peas begin their ascent, they’ll require something sturdy to cling to. This brings us to the delightful practice of crafting handmade hazel supports. Unlike plastic mesh, which cracks over time and ends its days in landfill, hazel is a renewable resource that melds seamlessly into the garden’s natural landscape.
Gathering hazel coppice has a certain rustic charm, a heritage craft in itself. Seek out your local woodland copse to source these bendable branches. Their longevity is impressive, often lasting several growing seasons before gracefully returning to the earth. With secateurs in hand, cut rods approximately 180cm in length for maximum support, though shorter branches can be used for lower growth.
Arrange the hazel rods in a gently arching fashion, pushing their ends into the soil on either side of your pea rows. Feel free to weave together additional rods crosswise for extra stability. This natural framework will not only support your peas but also transform your vegetable patch into a whimsical yet functional part of your garden.
The Gentle Art of Watering and Feeding
Peas require a steady hand when it comes to watering. Too much moisture can rot the roots, while too little can stunt their growth. The aim is for consistently moist soil, especially during flowering and pod forming. A mulch of well-rotted compost will help retain moisture and provide a slow, organic feed that nourishes at the roots.
Peas, by nature, are nitrogen-fixers. Their roots work in harmony with soil bacteria to enrich the earth, making them wonderful neighbours to hungrier plants. However, they’ll appreciate a little boost from a light feeding of seaweed extract during their active growth phases.
Listening As You Garden
As we garden, there are lessons to be learned beyond the mere tending of plants. Peas can teach us to be patient and present. The quiet rustle of their leaves in a breeze, or the busy visit of a bee, calls us to slow down and listen. There's wisdom in the garden’s rhythm, a reminder to pause and breathe amid life’s hustle.
Harvesting and Enjoying Your Efforts
The reward for your patience and care arrives in late spring and early summer. Delicately pluck the pods from their stems when they’re full and plump, being careful not to disturb the plant. There’s a simple joy in standing barefoot among your rows, opening a pod to taste the fruits of your labour straight from the vine.
Heritage peas go wonderfully in a multitude of dishes. From refreshing pea salads to hearty soups, they often require little more than a splash of olive oil and a pinch of salt and pepper to shine. There’s also delight to be found in preserving your harvest, frozen or bottled for the colder months, they offer a taste of summer sunshine right when you need it most.
Why It Matters
Choosing to grow heritage peas and crafting your own supports involves more than creating a successful crop. It is a testament to a sustainable, thoughtful way of living. Each choice we make in the garden, from seeds to supports, can reflect a lesser impact on the earth and an appreciation for the simple beauty of natural materials.
By using hazel in place of plastic, you create a habitat that invites biodiversity. Birds and insects find refuge, and your garden becomes not just a space for human enjoyment, but a haven for wildlife. In this way, we contribute to a greater environmental balance and embrace the ageless rhythms of growth and decay.
By cultivating traditional varieties and using natural materials, we're honouring the legacy of generations who worked harmoniously with nature. We become stewards of our gardens, not merely for our pleasure, but for the generations yet to tend to them.
As you step back to admire your handiwork, hazel boughs arching gracefully, the first peas peeking through in their greenery, take a moment. Reflect on the tranquility that comes from this ancient ritual, the joy in each green pod, and the gentle satisfaction of having respected the earth and her generous gifts while doing so. Gardening is, after all, one of the least selfish acts that leaves behind gifts for both the soul and the soil.
More than just a culinary delight, growing heritage peas is an act of sustainability. It’s about valuing biodiversity, reducing plastic in the garden, and creating beauty with natural materials. This journey invites us to make thoughtful choices, starting with the seeds we sow and the supports we create, weaving a tapestry that respects both the earth and its generous gifts.
Choosing Your Heritage Peas
Heritage peas come with their own unique stories, tales of Victorian kitchen gardens, wartime allotments, and rustic country cottages. When selecting your heritage pea varieties, consider what sparks your curiosity or what might link you to your garden’s past. Perhaps you’ll opt for the hearty flavour of Champion of England or the delicate sweetness of Victorian Colossal Climbing, each with its own tale to tell.
Sowing The Seeds
To sow your first peas is to embark on a slow-growing journey. Choose a bright, sunny spot with well-drained soil, enriched with organic matter. Before planting, soak the seeds overnight in water. This age-old technique softens their shells, encouraging quicker germination. While some gardeners favour starting peas in pots to protect against the all-too-curious nibblers of the garden, sowing directly into the ground is equally traditional, and perhaps a bit more romantic.
Plant your seeds in rows, spacing them about two inches apart and an inch deep. If you’ve ever sown anything as a child, the simplicity of peas takes you right back to that innocence, a reminder that gardening need not always be complicated to be rewarding.
Crafting Hazel Supports
As your peas begin their ascent, they’ll require something sturdy to cling to. This brings us to the delightful practice of crafting handmade hazel supports. Unlike plastic mesh, which cracks over time and ends its days in landfill, hazel is a renewable resource that melds seamlessly into the garden’s natural landscape.
Gathering hazel coppice has a certain rustic charm, a heritage craft in itself. Seek out your local woodland copse to source these bendable branches. Their longevity is impressive, often lasting several growing seasons before gracefully returning to the earth. With secateurs in hand, cut rods approximately 180cm in length for maximum support, though shorter branches can be used for lower growth.
Arrange the hazel rods in a gently arching fashion, pushing their ends into the soil on either side of your pea rows. Feel free to weave together additional rods crosswise for extra stability. This natural framework will not only support your peas but also transform your vegetable patch into a whimsical yet functional part of your garden.
The Gentle Art of Watering and Feeding
Peas require a steady hand when it comes to watering. Too much moisture can rot the roots, while too little can stunt their growth. The aim is for consistently moist soil, especially during flowering and pod forming. A mulch of well-rotted compost will help retain moisture and provide a slow, organic feed that nourishes at the roots.
Peas, by nature, are nitrogen-fixers. Their roots work in harmony with soil bacteria to enrich the earth, making them wonderful neighbours to hungrier plants. However, they’ll appreciate a little boost from a light feeding of seaweed extract during their active growth phases.
Listening As You Garden
As we garden, there are lessons to be learned beyond the mere tending of plants. Peas can teach us to be patient and present. The quiet rustle of their leaves in a breeze, or the busy visit of a bee, calls us to slow down and listen. There's wisdom in the garden’s rhythm, a reminder to pause and breathe amid life’s hustle.
Harvesting and Enjoying Your Efforts
The reward for your patience and care arrives in late spring and early summer. Delicately pluck the pods from their stems when they’re full and plump, being careful not to disturb the plant. There’s a simple joy in standing barefoot among your rows, opening a pod to taste the fruits of your labour straight from the vine.
Heritage peas go wonderfully in a multitude of dishes. From refreshing pea salads to hearty soups, they often require little more than a splash of olive oil and a pinch of salt and pepper to shine. There’s also delight to be found in preserving your harvest, frozen or bottled for the colder months, they offer a taste of summer sunshine right when you need it most.
Why It Matters
Choosing to grow heritage peas and crafting your own supports involves more than creating a successful crop. It is a testament to a sustainable, thoughtful way of living. Each choice we make in the garden, from seeds to supports, can reflect a lesser impact on the earth and an appreciation for the simple beauty of natural materials.
By using hazel in place of plastic, you create a habitat that invites biodiversity. Birds and insects find refuge, and your garden becomes not just a space for human enjoyment, but a haven for wildlife. In this way, we contribute to a greater environmental balance and embrace the ageless rhythms of growth and decay.
By cultivating traditional varieties and using natural materials, we're honouring the legacy of generations who worked harmoniously with nature. We become stewards of our gardens, not merely for our pleasure, but for the generations yet to tend to them.
As you step back to admire your handiwork, hazel boughs arching gracefully, the first peas peeking through in their greenery, take a moment. Reflect on the tranquility that comes from this ancient ritual, the joy in each green pod, and the gentle satisfaction of having respected the earth and her generous gifts while doing so. Gardening is, after all, one of the least selfish acts that leaves behind gifts for both the soul and the soil.