Grow Your Own Sugar Snap Peas

Sugar snap peas are such a treat to eat straight from the vine. I also like to grow my own because I've noticed these fresh peas are becoming increasingly pricey at the grocery store—and that's just for the pod. When you grow your own, you can enjoy the entire plant, pea shoots and all.

Sugar snap peas are so easy to grow in the kitchen garden, and you can plant them in just three easy steps.

When to Plant Sugar Snap Peas

Sugar snap peas are a great thing to grow when the weather is cooling down. You can grow them in the fall or the spring, or if you live in a temperate climate, you can grow them throughout the winter. They love when temps are between 45 and 65 degrees.

As you can see in the picture below, sugar snap peas are great companions for lettuce and cabbage plants.

Pick the Right Type of Peas to Grow for Your Garden

Before we get into the planting steps, make sure to buy great seeds. Seed quality does matter, especially when you're growing something like sugar snap peas.

Make sure you're also buying the right variety for you and your garden.

Vining Variety: Sugar Snap Peas

I like to grow the vining type, which will grow 4 to 6 feet up a trellis. I get a lot of production from these vines, and I like the taste of the pods better. Sugar snap peas are a hybrid of snow peas and field peas. Basically, this farmer wanted the mange tout (French for "eat everything") quality of snow peas but the sweetness of field peas.

Double check the seed package and look for keywords like "vine variety" or "pole variety"—both other ways of saying indeterminate or vining.

Non-Vining Variety: Sugar Daddy Peas

If you don't want to use a trellis for your peas, make sure you buy a variety that doesn't climb. Sugar daddy peas are a variety of sugar snap peas that don't vine, making them ideal for growing in a small container or pot.

Packages aren't always clear which type is inside, so when in doubt, read the fine print. The package might say something like "This short plants reach only 24 to 30 inches" for non-vining, or "Grow climbing six-foot to eight-foot vines on poles or a trellis" for vining. (I wish seed packages made it a little easier on us sometimes. Don't they know we're trying to figure out how to garden and need all the help we can get?)

All right, here's how to plant sugar snap peas in just three easy steps.

Soak Sugar Snap Peas Before Planting to Aid Germination

I've found that soaking my peas for 12 to 24 hours immediately before planting gives me the most success with germination (just a fancy way of saying seeds sprouting). To make the video above, I soaked my peas for just a couple hours, and even that made a big difference.

The reason to soak peas is to speed the process of germination along. Seeds have seed coats to protect themselves. Seeds are smart, you see, and they want to keep themselves alive and safe, which means not sprouting at the wrong time. Seed coats help to prevent that, and peas have particularly thick seed coats.

Soaking pea seeds speeds the germination process by helping to remove this coat. Water is what penetrates the seed coat and tells the seed inside to wake up. You'll notice the seeds beginning to swell with water, and this is exactly what you want. Seeds have to keep filling with water until they literally burst open and produce a little pea shoot.

Dig a Trench for Your Sugar Snap Peas

A lot of beginner gardeners (myself included) make the mistake of burying seeds too deep in the soil. Burying a seed too deep means giving that little plant way too much work to do in order to reach the surface. If the shoot doesn't reach sunlight within a certain period of time, the plant will die because it needs sunlight to grow to the next level. Seeds do need to be buried to a certain depth to achieve proper soil contact, but no further.

A general rule of thumb for burying seeds is not to bury a seed more than twice the width of the seed, but it's best to just check the package. Recommended seed depth is one place where seed packages do help us out by telling us an exact measurement.

If you look at a pea seed, you'll notice it's not even half an inch wide, so you don't even want to bury it one inch deep.

I use a dibber to dig a shallow trench along the base of a trellis. (Remember, if you're growing sugar snaps, not sugar daddies, make sure to plant your pea seeds near a trellis or some kind of structure for those little tendrils to climb.)

I also like to place all the seeds before I cover them up—that way, I can be sure that I've spaced them correctly. I plant my pea seeds about 2 to 3 inches apart. I'm sure that's breaking the plant spacing rules, but these peas will be growing up a trellis and don't need room on either side to spread out. I know from experience that this spacing will still allow the pea vines to do really well.

Cover Up Sugar Snap Pea Seeds

Use the water that your peas were soaking in to flood the trench and make sure there's enough moisture in the soil to activate your seeds. Then, simply cover the seeds with soil or fresh compost. Add additional water if needed.

It's Sugar Snap Pea Growing Time!

Every single day for the next two weeks after planting sugar snap peas, add a little bit of water to the growing space—not enough to flood the area, just enough to ensure the seeds don't dry out. Again, those seeds need water surrounding them so they can continue to swell and germinate.

You should start to see pea shoots within 5 to 10 days. If you don't see shoots emerge by day 8 or say, consider coming back in and replanting.

I hope that you'll give sugar snap peas a try this season! Thanks for bringing back the kitchen garden with me, one pea at a time!