As long as you choose a non-hybrid variety, peas are one of the easiest garden vegetables for seed-saving.  To that end, I let the snow peas stay in the ground for a couple of weeks after the pods began to turn woody, giving them time to mature their seeds.

Last year, I left the pods on the vine until they were completely brown, but this year I'm experimenting with harvesting them a bit earlier when they're in the pale yellow stage.  My goal is to counteract the mildew that struck about a third of last year's seeds.  Rather than expecting the pods to dry on the plant like last year, this year I carefully shelled out the peas and put them on a rack to dry.

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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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