How to Grow Peas: A Detailed Guide to Planting Techniques and Precautions

Peas are certainly familiar to everyone and are a fairly popular vegetable. Eating peas has benefits such as protecting eyesight and promoting bowel movements, so many people like to choose them for their meals. Nowadays many people want to grow them too, but before planting, you first need to understand its planting techniques, and there are also many points to pay attention to.

How to Grow Peas

1. Land selection: Choose a field with flat terrain and convenient irrigation and drainage for planting. The soil should be relatively high in organic matter; sandy loam to clay soil is acceptable, with slightly acidic to neutral being preferable.

2. Land preparation and bed making: Choose land that has not grown legume crops in the previous year, apply sufficient base fertilizer, and provide a complete three-ditch system to ensure smooth drainage.

3. Sowing: In the Yangtze River basin, autumn sowing is mostly practiced, from late October to early November, and sowing can also be done in early spring from late February to early March. To save time, it is best to use plastic film mulching to promote early emergence; in South China, sowing is done in stages from September to November, with harvests taken in stages in the winter of that year and the spring of the following year.

Pea Planting Techniques and Precautions

I. Planting techniques:

1. Sowing methods can be hole sowing, broadcast sowing, or drill sowing. For hole sowing, the row spacing is 35 cm. The plant spacing is 10 cm, with 2-3 seeds per hole, and the seed rate is 10-20 kg.

2. For broadcast sowing, the seed rate per mu is 15-20 kg. However, years of practice have shown that drill sowing is the best method; it not only saves seed and makes weeding easier, but is especially good for fertilizing and harvesting green pods. The method is to mark out beds on the prepared land according to the standard of a 30 cm wide ditch and a 1.5 m wide bed surface, requiring the bed surface to be level and the soil fine.

3. Sow according to the specification of a 0.15 m wide sowing strip and a 0.25 m wide empty strip, then cover with fine soil from the ditch after sowing. The covering depth should be just enough to cover the seeds firmly, with a covering depth of 0.2 mm. If the soil cover is too deep, heavy rain may cause the soil surface to crust and affect emergence.

4. If the soil cover is too shallow, the seeds are exposed and are easily eaten or destroyed by birds, rats and other animals, causing gaps in the field. The number of seeds sown per mu should be controlled at 37,000-43,000 seeds. That is, ensure a basic stand of 34,000-40,000 plants per mu.

II. Precautions:

1. Shade and cooling measures. In summer cultivation, because the temperature is high, growth is fast, the growth period is short, and the pods are small and few, so timely installation of shade netting can effectively reduce direct sunlight, lower air and soil temperatures, increase soil moisture, promote individual plant growth, and increase yield.

2. For winter greenhouse cultivation of peas, promptly cover well with plastic film and do a good job of cold protection and heat preservation. Before a short-term strong cold wave arrives, additional cold-protection materials should be temporarily applied in a rush so that the tender green pods are spared from freezing damage.

Field Management of Peas

1. Chemical weeding. After sowing and before emergence, 100 ml of 50% acetochlor or 200 ml of 20% napropamide can be mixed with 50 kg of water per mu and sprayed over the whole field. It is best to apply the pesticide when the soil is moist after rain. After spraying, people and livestock must not trample and destroy the herbicide layer, as this can significantly improve the control effect.

2. Pest and disease control. From recent years of production practice, pests and diseases occur relatively lightly. The occasional pests and diseases and their control methods are: use 20 g of 10% imidacloprid plus 6 ml of deltamethrin to control leafminers, aphids and cabbage caterpillars. When controlling insects, 75-100 g of 75% chlorothalonil can be added to simultaneously control diseases.

Harvesting Peas

Due to differences in growing season and cultivation method, the number of days from flowering to picking green pods varies greatly. In summer cultivation, because the temperature is high, the pods grow quickly, and it is only 20 d from flowering to harvest, while in winter cultivation, it takes more than 30 days from flowering to harvest. Therefore, we should flexibly determine the harvest date according to the use of the pods and the degree of pod filling. For those mainly eaten as green peas, harvest when the pods have fully bulged, the peas have reached 70% fullness, and the pods are just about to begin changing color.

The planting method for peas is actually very simple. When planting, you need to do a good job of site selection, then sow at the appropriate time. The protective measures taken in winter and summer are different, so everyone should pay close attention. In the later stages of planting, management needs to be strengthened, and weeding and pest and disease control work must be done well, so as to ensure their growth.