Planting Peas on St. Patrick's

I heard about this tradition a year ago, but didn't actually get a chance to try it out for myself because our garden wasn't quite ready for planting. I think I'm going to give it a try this year.

Gardeners often look to the holidays to help remind them when to plant certain seeds. One traditional planting time is to plant your peas on St. Patrick's Day. For our area, the average last frost is March 15, so St. Patrick's is the perfect time to plant peas since they prefer cooler weather and need plenty of growing time to get nice and sweet before it gets too hot for them.

If you live further north and the ground is a little hard, that's ok! Drill holes into the soil and plant your peas. You can even sow them under the snow (you can save some peas for a later planting, too).

Once your peas are ready to harvest, you'll want to eat them quickly or blanche and freeze them. Otherwise, they will turn to start within several hours of harvesting. Click here for instructions on blanching & freeze peas (this is specifically for sugar snap peas which can be eaten with the shell; however, you can shell and then blanch & freeze English peas in a similar fashion).