The Deri Air
A Blog and Farmcast About a Vegetable Farm and Then Some
Peas and Picking Them
Posted by Deri Farm | Filed under Crops, Peas
Peas are a great pick-your-own item. Kids love to walk down the rows picking and eating…now that I think about it, so do adults! I just wanted to post a quick note on how to determine if a pea is ready to be picked.
There are two types of peas we have for PYO: shell and snap. The pop/shell on the shell peas are very tough, so you need to pop them open and strip out the peas. Snap peas can be eaten shell and all, but I do recommend stripping the strings to make them a bit more tender. When peas are not quite ripe, they will look thin and you may see small indentations where the peas are growing. Below you can see the pea pod is somewhat thin:
It's thin and not plump
When a shell pea is ripe, you will see the peas bulging out the sides and the pod as a whole will look much more plump:
This shell pea is plump and the peas are bulging out!
A snap pea looks very plump, but if the peas are starting to bulge out the sides, then it is overripe! Also, notice the dark green stripe along the length of the pod:
A snap pea ready to be picked! Notice how it is consistently plump and no peas bulging.