by Carl Marcum, WVU Extension Agent, Wayne County

What highly nutritious, delicious, easy-to-grow vegetable is among the first to be harvested and may be served raw or stir-fried or lightly cooked with a variety of other vegetables? The answer should be a “snap” or, more precisely “snap peas” or “sweet snap peas.”

Snap peas are classified in a group known as edible pod peas because they do not require shelling like English peas do. The whole pod is eaten as in the case of string beans. The advantage is an increase in yield and a reduction in labor because you use the whole pod, not just the seeds inside the pod. Sweet snaps or sugar snaps have round pods. Snow peas, also in this group, have flat pods.

Like string beans, the snap peas’ strings need to be removed before you eat them. They are best served before they reach maturity or before the hulls or pods get tough. Snap peas are versatile—they’re delicious cooked alone or with other vegetables or eaten raw as an appetizer or a salad ingredient. They’re also easy to freeze for enjoying later.

Sugar snap peas may be seeded outside in mid-February in the western parts of West Virginia or in mid-March statewide. They germinate well in cool soil and easily tolerate frosts and even spring freezes. Seed snap peas about ¾-inch deep in a sunny, well-drained location. Snap peas do best in soils having a pH above 6.0 and good fertility, so gardeners should get lime and fertilizer recommendations from WVU’s Soil Testing Lab.

Taller varieties like Sugar Snap need trellising for best results. To conserve space and labor, they may be planted in double rows, with one row on each side of the trellis. A more compact variety like Sugar Ann may be seeded on the outside of a taller variety to get a somewhat earlier harvest and to further make use of limited space. Because of their early harvest, snap peas face little weed competition. When the crop is finished—around the first half of June—simply mow down the old vines, till the soil, and plant a succession crop like pumpkins, beans, or corn in their spot.

—WVU-ES—