Shelling pea "Karina", 10 g, AGRONOM

• Species: Pisum sativum — garden pea, shelling type
• Variety: "Karina" — wrinkled (marrowfat) seed
• Range: Organic Way — organically grown seed, EU organic leaf
• Producer: Agrofirma Sėklos (Lithuania)
• Packet: 10 g (~40–50 seeds, 2–3 m of row)
• Earliness: early; picking 60–70 days from sowing
• Height: 60–70 cm, sturdy stems
• Sowing time: March–May
• Harvest: June–August
• Sowing: direct, 3–4 cm deep
• Spacing: 5 cm between plants, 30–40 cm between rows
• Germination: 7–12 days, soil from +6 °C
• Position: sunny, sheltered
• Soil: free-draining, pH 6.0–7.0, no fresh manure
• Uses: fresh, freezing, canning

When to sow. Peas are not afraid of cold: seed germinates from +6 °C and seedlings shrug off a light frost. Sow the first row as soon as the soil dries out (second half of April), then two more rows at fortnightly intervals, or the whole crop arrives in a single week.

Preparing the bed. Peas fix their own nitrogen, so they need no nitrogen feed, and fresh manure actually harms them — plenty of leaf, no pods. Give phosphorus and potassium before sowing, for example a cup of wood ash per square metre. Lime an acid soil.

Soaking. Soak the seed 6–8 hours in tepid water to bring germination forward by 2–3 days. No longer than that, or the seed suffocates.

Support. "Karina" stands by itself, but in a windy spot or a long row push in 60 cm twiggy sticks or run two strings. A flattened row always catches mildew.

Watering. What matters is moisture at bud set and while the pods fill. In dry weather water once a week and water properly (10–15 l/m²) rather than a little every day — shallow watering keeps the roots at the surface.

Picking. Pick every 2–3 days, working from the bottom up. The more often you pick, the longer the plant keeps setting pods. An overripe pod goes fibrous and stops the whole plant.

After the crop. Do not pull the plants up — cut the stems at ground level. The root nodules stay in the soil and hand their nitrogen to the next crop: cabbage and cucumber do noticeably better after peas.

Watch out for. Pea aphid (wash off with water, soap solution if heavy) and powdery mildew in August — which is why late sowings are best avoided. Pea moth flies during flowering, and an early sowing stays ahead of it.