How to grow peas at home?

Modern gardeners can grow peas not only on personal plots, but also on a windowsill or balcony. Under these conditions, it grows healthy and tasty. You can enjoy such fruits for many months in a row.

For growing at home, it is worth choosing undersized pea varieties. They are compact and neat. It is worth noting that you can eat not only ripe peas, but also juicy green foliage. The most popular are the following pea varieties.

• "Ambrosia". This variety was bred by domestic breeders. It belongs to the early maturing. Its fruits can be eaten fresh or used to prepare delicious meals. Young peas ripen about a month and a half after planting in the soil. The grains of such plants have a light green color.
• "Faith". This type of peas is ideal for canning and preparing various dishes. The pod has a pleasant lime color. The peas are large inside, slightly yellowish. The only disadvantage of this variety is that plants are often infected with ascochitosis.
• "Sugar Girlfriend". This variety belongs to the medium early. Peas bear fruit for a long time. Its fruits have a pleasant, delicate taste. It is worth noting that peas can be eaten with the pod. Its peel is also tender and juicy.
• "Children's Sugar". Compact pea bushes grow well in an apartment or house. The taste of such peas is very pleasant, the fruits are soft. Therefore, they can even be given to children. Such plants are unpretentious to care for. Therefore, you can grow them without any problems.
• "Oscar". This variety was developed by Czech breeders. He is ultra-early. Fruits appear within a month and a half after planting. Plants are resistant to most common diseases.
• "Hawsky Pearl". This type of pea belongs to the mid-season. The grains are small in size and have a pleasant pale green color. Plants perfectly resist most fungal diseases and have a pleasant, delicate taste.
• "Sunrise". These peas can be easily grown at home. The fruits appear on the bushes in about two months. The peas are dark green in color. They can be eaten fresh or used to prepare various simple dishes.

For plants to grow and develop well, it is important to properly prepare for planting seeds.

First of all, you need to prepare a container in which young peas will grow.

• Pots. Large pots are worth choosing for planting bushes. This is important because the root system of these plants is well developed. Therefore, it simply does not fit in a small pot. Ceramic containers are best suited for planting plants. Place a drainage layer on the bottom of the pot. For this purpose, you can use pebbles, brick chips or rubble. The drainage layer should be no more than two centimeters.
• Plastic containers. On the balcony, peas can be grown in plastic bottles. It is very profitable to use such containers, because this way it is possible to save free space. Preparing bottles for planting peas is quite simple. Each container must be washed. A round or rectangular hole should be cut out on the side of it.Next, soil and seeds must be placed in the container. The prepared plastic bottle must be hung from the beams or hooks in the wall with a rope.
• Containers. If a person plans to grow a large number of bushes at home, a large container is suitable for seedlings. For disembarkation, it is worth using boxes with a depth of 30 centimeters. It is very important that there are special drainage holes at the bottom. Before planting the plants, the containers must be well disinfected. After that, pebbles or brick chips are also laid on the bottom.

Plants can be placed on a loggia, on a balcony or on a windowsill. The optimum temperature for growing peas is 20-23 degrees. If pets live in a house or apartment, it is important to protect young peas from them.

Choosing a nutritious and light soil for planting peas. You can buy the soil or prepare it yourself. In the second case, it is better to use the soil on which nightshades or pumpkins previously grew. You should not choose the land where beans were grown before. It contains too few nutrients that peas need. It is necessary to add high-quality fertilizer to the container with nutrient soil, as well as any baking powder.

It can be perlite, coconut fiber, or vermiculite. All these products are mixed in equal proportions. The soil should be disinfected before use. To do this, it should be spilled with boiling water or treated with a solution of potassium permanganate. When buying soil from a gardening store, you should pay attention to a versatile substrate that is suitable for seedlings or indoor flowers. It does not need to be disinfected. It is enough just to fill pots or containers with soil.

The preparation of planting material also plays an important role. The yield of peas depends on its quality. You need to prepare the seeds as follows.

• Sort out the peas. You can plant in the soil both purchased seeds and collected independently. Do not plant too old grains. Peas remain viable for no longer than two years. When examining the planting material, you need to remove all defective peas. Remaining grains should be free of dark spots and mold.
• Saline treatment. The sorted grains should be placed in a container with a saline solution. Water for its preparation must be used well-settled. Peas that float to the surface must be carefully removed from the container, rinsed under running water and dried. The lightness of the peas indicates that there are no germs in them. Therefore, there is no point in planting them in the soil.
• Soaking in potassium permanganate. This treatment helps protect peas from common fungal diseases. Instead of a light pink solution, you can use warm water with a small amount of boric acid. In the first case, the peas are dipped into a container for several hours, in the second - for 10-20 minutes. After this treatment, the peas are again well washed and dried.
• Germination. To speed up the germination process of green seedlings, peas can be further germinated. To do this, the peas are placed between layers of cloth moistened with warm water. In some cases, a small amount of a biostimulant is added to the liquid. Sprout peas in a warm place, periodically sprinkling the fabric with warm water.

Step-by-step instructions for planting peas consist of several main stages.

• To begin with, you need to make several identical furrows on the soil surface. Their depth should be no more than two centimeters. The average distance between the holes is 5-6 centimeters. You need to lay the peas sprouts down.
• After placing the seeds in the soil, sprinkle the grooves with a thin layer of soil.
• Next, the pots of peas must be moistened.For this it is worth using settled water.
• The containers prepared in this way are temporarily covered with glass or transparent film. In such makeshift greenhouses, seedlings germinate faster.
• The first few days after planting the seeds, the peas should be regularly ventilated. To do this, it is enough to briefly remove the film or glass from the pots. Finally, such a shelter is removed after the appearance of full-fledged green shoots.
• If the plants were grown in a common container, they will have to be dived. Seedlings must be removed from the old container carefully, along with the soil on the roots. It is necessary to plant them in new containers carefully, densely covering the rhizome with soil. The plants should be watered immediately after transplanting. The peas should be kept in the shade for several days after the pick.

When growing peas at home, you need to properly care for them.

• Watering. For the peas to be juicy and tasty, the plants need to be watered abundantly. The frequency of watering also depends on how well green bushes develop. For watering, it is worth using well-settled warm water. If it is cold, the roots of the plants can start to rot. It is very important not to overmoisten the soil. It also leads to the development of fungal diseases.
• Top dressing. You need to feed the peas within one to two weeks after planting the plants. In the first half of the season, it is fertilized with products with a high nitrogen content. Instead, you can use complex feeding. During the fruiting period of peas, fertilizers with potassium and phosphorus can be applied to the soil. These foods speed up the pea formation in the pods. In addition, such dressings make the fruit tastier and juicier. From time to time, peas grown on the window can be fed with biostimulants. As a rule, such a product is applied to the soil once a week.
• Airing. Peas are not afraid of drafts. Therefore, the room in which the pots with plants are located must be regularly ventilated. This is best done in dry, cloudy weather.
• Pollination. Peas are among those plants that pollinate independently. Therefore, there are usually no problems with ovaries. But, if there are not very many flowers on the bushes, it is recommended to shake the plant stems from time to time.

In addition, we must not forget that peas are a light-loving plant. Therefore, it is important to ensure that the plants are constantly exposed to light. Peas growing in the shade are not as tasty and juicy. The plants themselves also appear paler and weaker. Therefore, it is worth placing containers with peas on the sunny side of the house. If possible, bushes should grow under lighting fixtures, such as phytolamps.

Home-grown peas rarely get sick. Typically, plants are affected by several diseases.

• Powdery mildew. The first symptom of this disease is a grayish coating that appears both on the pods and on the foliage. Over time, it darkens and becomes denser. In the future, the leaves die off, and the pods fall off. Small amounts of pure wood ash or chalk can be added to the water used for irrigation to protect the shrubs from this disease. Infected plants are treated with a solution of mustard powder, iodine or serum. It is recommended to spray the bushes 3-4 times with an interval of 5 days. If the plants continue to hurt, fungicides are used.
• Root rot. This disease occurs when too much water is used to water the plants. The big disadvantage of this disease is that infected plants look healthy for a long time.Therefore, when the gardener himself notices the signs of the disease, it is too late to treat the bush. At this time, the bush turns black and becomes slippery. A pungent smell of rot comes from it. Having noticed all these signs, it is recommended to destroy the plant.
• Blackleg. This disease does not pose a particular danger to plants grown on a balcony or window. But to protect the bushes from this ailment, it is recommended to coat the stem with slaked lime. The product layer should be thin.

Pests such as spider mites or aphids can also harm peas. To protect plants from their attacks, a solution with wormwood and garlic is usually used. For its preparation, two tablespoons of dry herb are diluted in two liters of boiling water. The liquid is infused during the day. After that, finely chopped garlic is added to the container. After a couple of minutes, the resulting mixture is filtered and used to spray the stems, as well as the soil in pots.

A gardener who violates the rules of growing crops may face other problems. When the bushes are not watered enough, the whips begin to dry out. And if pods are not tied on them in time, perhaps the plants do not have enough sunlight.

It is worth starting harvesting immediately after the peas are ripe. The ripening time of fruits is different for different varieties. This must be taken into account even when planting peas. You need to pluck the pods carefully. Do not jerk the stems sharply. By removing some of the ripened fruits, you can count on the fact that new green pods will form on the bushes. If harvested correctly, peas will be able to bear fruit within two months.

You can collect and use in food not only fruits, but also green foliage. It is rich in vitamins and tastes very good. As a rule, the leaves are finely chopped and added to salads. They go well with fresh vegetables and simple sauces. The fruits can not only be used immediately for food. Some people freeze peas by placing them in plastic containers or bags with special fasteners.