The mange tout has been over for about a couple of weeks now as we didn’t necessarily pick them as often as we should have and the plant stopped flowering. It was amazing however, to wander out the back door and get stuck into some freshly harvested sugarsnap peas.
I’ve left the plant in due to being very busy at work and it has become very yellow and has lots of small holes on the leaves and some of the peas. After a comment on a previous post, I decided to find out more about it. The RHS here give a really good explanation of it and a cracking picture that pretty much sums up what i found. The only discrepancy i would say is the RHS say Pea Moth doesn’t attack Mange Tout – well it has mine! This might be a lot to do with the fact that the peas have gone over and swelled inside the pods.
I know they are not meant to be eaten like this, but last night I decided to pick about 8 handfuls of pods and shell them. After pushing aside the caterpillars munching on the peas, I managed to get a decent amount of a crop. They were a bit hard, but after boiling for 10 minutes they were a lot softer, although still hardish. Nothing wrong with that though (even though the ‘eggs’ I removed while shelling the peas turned out to be caterpillar excrement!), although the Mrs. really wasn’t up for eating any of them!
My only worry is that the moths will stay in the soil until next year, so I will have to make sure I rotate the crop into the next bed, only grow Mange Tout and make sure I don’t let them go over.
Tags: mangetout, mangetout peas, pea caterpillar, pea moth, peas being eaten, peas yellowing
