Nott’s Excelsior, one of the dwarf second early peas, is among the best favored and most productive varieties. Note the square ended, well filled pod 
How to Have the Sweetest and Earliest Peas—By E. D. Darlington, 7. 
WHICH ARE THE MOS? DOLICIOUS AND WHY — HOW TO GET A CROP OF PEAS IN SIXTY DAYS — 
HOW TO TAKE AD, ANLAGE OF OUR PECULIAR AND SOMEWHAT UNFAVORABLE CLIMATE 
| Rese ee speaking the quality and flavor 
of different varieties of garden peas may 
be determined from the appearance of the dry 
seed or peas. ‘The small white seed of the 
extra early kinds is hard, smooth, and almost 
flinty when dry; but these seeds are very 
hardy and may be planted very early in the 
spring or even late in the fall to lie dormant 
during the winter. These hard-seeded sorts, 
however, give very tender and exceptionally 
sweet and juicy peas for the table if gathered 
just before they reach full size, so that in 
many gardens they are esteemed above all 
others. In addition, because they come in 
very early and are among the very first prod- 
ucts of the garden, they are perhaps the 
more keenly relished. Still, it must be kept 
in mind that as these peas become older and 
harder the sweetness disappears rapidly, so 
that if the pods are allowed to become the 
least bit yellowed on the vine the cooked peas 
will be about as enjoyable as so many pellets 
of wood. 
Among the larger-seeded, later varieties 
there are several which have seeds of smooth, 
or nearly smooth, outline and a hard, flinty 
texture. These are hardy, vigorous, and can 
be grown under less favorable conditions, 
but must be gathered and eaten before they 
reach full size to be at all palatable. 
As contrasted with the smooth, or n2arly 
smooth, hard-seeded, hardier peas, there are 
both early and late varieties in which the dry 
seed is very much shriveled or shrunken, 
this being due to the large percentage of 
sugar contained in the green peas. Varieties 
having this characteristic are more tender 
and sweeter in flavor when cooked, and con- 
tinue ina good edible condition for a greater 
length of time — that is, the peas are still 
sweet after they reach full size and will be 
quite palatable when gathered at a stage of 
ripeness at which the hard, round-seeded sorts 
would be tough and flavorless. 
This wrinkled and shriveled seed, however, 
is too tender to plant before the soil is 
warm and partially dried out in the spring; 
aside from this, they are practically as early 
and quite as productive as the poorer flavored 
sorts with hard seeds. 
The time of gathering the peas has an 
important bearing on the flavor. Generally 
it is best to gather them in the early morning, 
putting them in a cool place until needed, 
and shelling them from the pods just before 
they are to be cooked. Pods gathered in 
the middle of the day when they have been 
exposed to the hot sunshine for some time 
give hard, tough peas, unless the day be 
cool and cloudy. 
THE FIRST EARLIES 
The best known and most generally 
planted garden peas are the “extra early” 
kinds with small, smooth, white seeds. 
Their great merit is that the hard seed is 
not liable to rot in the ground before it be- 
comes warmed. ‘The vines make a slender 
growth with comparatively sparse or open 
(not dense) foliage, and grow from eighteen 
inches to two and one-half feet in height, 
yielding pods for gathering in from sixty 
72 
to seventy days from the time of planting. 
The parent of this class is the old Phila- 
delphia Extra Early or Daniel O’ Rourke, but 
constant selection to increase the earliness 
has resulted in almost as many varieties 
(or names) as there are seedsmen. Some 
houses even offer (under different titles) 
two or more selections of this same pea 
which differ only in their time of maturity 
from the seed. 
The young peas, gathered just before 
they reach full size, are sweet and tender, 
and are so highly esteemed by those who 
realize and act upon this fact that in some 
gardens they are planted every week for 
succession, in preference to the larger-podded 
and more sugary later varieties. 
The effort to secure extreme earliness 
has been accompanied by a dwarfing of 
the vine, with smaller pods, and those not 
as well filled with peas. Market gardeners. 
and others growing peas for profit rather 
than for quality alone plant Maud S. and 
Lightning strains because they yield more 
heavily. Slightly later, with a little taller 
growth, larger and better filled pods is. 
Prolific Early, ready for use three to five 
days later than the extremely early type;. 
but the increase in the yield is well worth 
a few days’ waiting. 
A good grower and very productive, but 
poor in flavor, is Alaska, probably the most 
generally planted variety for canning because 
of the ease with which it can be grown. 
It is a certaim cropper, has a slightly wrinkled, 
dark blue seed and is almost as early as the: 
