CONDITIONS FOR PEA GROWING. 305 



a much longer season than in wintry climates, although, 

 in some places, midsummer growth is impracticable. Most 

 failures to realize this satisfaction with the pea are due 

 to late planting and failure to recognize that, in many 

 parts of the State, the pea is a winter and not a summer 

 plant. 



In the growth of peas in the field most disappointments 

 have followed the same misapprehension, and the interior 

 has conceded a monopoly of pea conditions to the coast 

 when the former can grow large amounts of forage, at 

 least, by taking a different time of the year for it. For- 

 tunately, this fact is coming to be better understood, and 

 large fields of peas are now grown as winter feed for 

 dairy cows and in the orchard to be plowed under early 

 in the spring for green manuring, where only recently the 

 pea was supposed to be unsuited to the climate. These 

 remarks apply to the true pea, not to the so-called "cow- 

 pea, ' ' which really belongs to the bean family and is very 

 susceptible to frost injury. 



Soils and Situations for the Pea. The pea succeeds on 

 a wide variety of soils a good, rich loam of sufficient re- 

 tentiveness being the ideal. Where it is winter-grown, 

 with moderate heat and ample moisture, lighter soils can 

 be successfully used, because they are warmer and dispose 

 of the surplus water more readily. Though the pea with- 

 stands much frost, it needs warmth for rapid advance- 

 ment, and for this reason the earliest peas, as, for ex- 

 ample, peas for Christmas from September sowing, are 

 grown where there is little frost, and hillsides are often 

 used to escape the heavier frosts of the valley below. In 

 moist bottom lands in the interior, and on uplands near the 

 coast, peas naturally thrive much later in the season than 

 on the interior plains and hillsides, and the latest green 

 peas are grown in the moist lands of the coast valleys, 

 moisture being retained by cultivation or supplied by ir- 

 rigation, according to local conditions. By using these 

 different situations green peas are available for city trade 

 nearly the entire year. 



