Oh snap! The Surprising Story of the Sugar Snap Pea

Welcome to the Grow youw Self podcast. Surprising stories about the food we eat and inspiring conversations about what it really takes to live the whole and happy life we're all craving. My name's Nicole John C. Burke, and I'm the owner of Rooted Garden and Gardenary Incorporated and author of the upcoming book Kitchen Garden Revival. Is it obvious? I'm kind of obsessed with the kitchen garden.

Each week here on the Grow youw.

Self podcast, you're going to be shocked at the things you'll learn about foods you eat every single day. And you'll feel encouraged to take little steps in your own busy schedule to create a more whole and happy life for yourself. So turn up the volume and let's take a walk, go on a drive, or just hang out in the kitchen garden together. Every time you listen, I promise you'll learn something that will help you grow yourself in a new and exciting way. Sound good? I think so. Now let's dig in.

Do you just want some peas and quiet? Are you hoping that you can find your inner peas? Well, you are in the right place. Today on the Grow youw Self podcast, we are talking about peas. Sugar snap peas to be specific. Oh, snap. It is the surprising story about the sugar snap peas that we love to snack on. Welcome to the Grow youw Self podcast. I am Nicole Burke and I cannot wait to jump into this new episode to tell you some surprising facts about those super cute peas that we love to snack on all the time. This week's episode is brought to you by my Green Thumb Quiz. It is a super quick and fun quiz that can show you where you are in the garden and that you actually do have a green thumb after all. As soon as you get your Green Thumb Quiz results, we will sign you up for some awesome garden resources and help you grow to the next level. So go check it out@gardenary.com quiz and now let's get started. Let's find some love, some peas, and some happiness inside the next Grow Yourself episode. Welcome back to the Grow youw Self podcast. I am so excited today to talk to you about peas. Yes, peas. I know you're excited about it too. Seriously though, peas are one of my favorite things to grow in the kitchen garden and it's one of the easiest things to plant right now. So it seemed a great time to talk about it on the podcast. I'm in the Chicago area and actually this week is the week to plant sugar snap peas in the garden. So I couldn't help but jump on here and chat with you all about peas and tell you all the crazy stuff, stories I just figured out about peas and hopefully inspire you to learn more about the peas you buy at the grocery store and hopefully teach you how to grow your own. So believe it or not, there are three types of peas. Did you know that? Like, not just. Not just like three different, you know, varieties of peas that you eat, but I mean, like three categories of peas. So first we have our traditional garden peas. I don't know about you, but this was green that I grew up with. It was actually came to my home in this beautiful silver can. I think the brand was lesure or something like that, Leure peas. And that was a vegetable served up at least once a week in my on my kitchen dinner table at home. So lisr peas and you just kind of like drain them of their. Whatever Steph was keeping them preserved in their can and then serve them up with dinner. So those are traditional garden peas and those have these sweet full size seeds inside the pea pods. So these have been grown for so long, we're going to talk about their history in a moment, but they've been around the longest and we're just going to call those traditional garden peas. So that's the first category, the second category and the third category are known as what the French call mange tout. All right, so you just learned a little bit of French here on the grow yourself podcast. Mangetoutout is French for eat all. And this applies to these other two types of peas. So we have inside of there the snow peas and the sugar snap peas. Mangetout, as you can tell, means that you get to eat the whole thing. So you can eat the pod and, and the pea seeds inside. Pretty amazing. Well, the first type of pea inside the mulge. Two categories is the snow pea, and these have been around for quite a long time as well. These have a flatter pod than the sugar snap peas and they have very, very tiny peas. In fact, those peas haven't reached maturity yet. Like when we eat them, they're just so tiny. In fact, if you are picking them and eating them at the right time, generally those little bitty pea seeds are seriously bitty. You just want to see like a slight bump in the shell when you, when you start to munch on them, and that's when you know you've got it. Right now, snow peas got their name. You can think about it. Why would they be called snow peas? Well, because they can actually endure some snow, some frost. These peas are one of the earliest crops to come out of the garden because they can withstand cooler temperatures, like, really cooler temperatures, like below freezing kind of temperatures. So snow peas have. Have been known to be grown really on the edges of winter and have helped sustained cultures and civilizations for hundreds of years because they're a winter crop. So cool. Right, then we have our sugar snap pea, and that is the topic of conversation today. So sugar snap peas have a fun, surprising story. Have you heard it? I hadn't, honestly, before this podcast. Sugar snap peas are actually a crossbreed. They are a new variety of peas, and they were developed after I was born. You guys. I was born in 1978, and the sugar snap pea did not come into existence until I was 1 years old. That's right. So sugar snap peas are basically like a snow pea and a garden pea. The first two types of peas we discussed getting together and having a baby. That's what a sugar snap pea is, and we are going to talk all about it in today's episode. So if you've never had the pleasure of snacking on a sugar snap pea, let me tell you, the deliciousness is overwhelming. It's one of the most delicious vegetables I think you can snack on raw or cooked. They're super tender, but they're also crisp, and they have a really sweet flavor profile. And you. You can eat them, like, literally right out of the garden. So let's go way back, like, way way back, maybe 10,000 years ago back, to start talking about peas in the first place, now that you know, there are, in fact, three different main types of peas. So those garden peas we discussed, they're assumed to have been around for thousands of years, maybe 10,000 years. The great researchers of our food assume that peas have been around since maybe 3000 BC or even before. And they're thinking they started somewhere in, say, Southeast Asia, the Middle east, or northern Africa. And we do have some mark in terms of moving to Western civilization that the Romans typically or probably brought peas to Britain sometime during the Roman Empire because they show up around the 17th century in England. Now, the Chinese started moving beyond just garden peas and began to show usage of the snow pea in the 19th century. I have to say, when I lived In China in 2001-2003, we had snow peas on the regular. I mean, they were in almost all of our soups and hot pots and stir fries. They were so good. So peas have been around, obviously, for a long time. And there's good reason for it, because peas are this unique vegetable. Well, they're not really A vegetable. But they're this unique plant product that can help people make it through winter. So peas can be grown in the late fall because, like we said, they can hang on in cold or frost. And most peas would be harvested for the dried peas. Right. So what lots of people could do is grow peas in the late fall and then shell those peas and keep those peas throughout the winter to keep them fed. And then as soon as the ground could be worked, when the snow or the frost cleared, they could plant peas. So it's this great protein, this great plant power that has literally helped people for years and years to keep going in those lean winter months. Well, the peas came to North America supposedly by, you know, our early. What are those people called? Sailors, Discoverers, explorers. That's it. The explorers came, and when they came, they brought peas with them. In fact, people like to say that Christopher Columbus probably planted some peas way back in 1492. Thomas Jefferson, known for his famous kitchen garden at Monticello, is known to have grown over 30 varieties of peas in his garden. And with me having lived in Charlottesville, Virginia, right down the street from Monticello, I can attest to the fact that Virginia is an awesome place to grow peas because you have this nice, mild, slow warm up in spring and a nice mild cool down in fall. So it makes sense that he could grow so many peas in his spot. But it wasn't until I was one years old that this amazing guy decided to develop a sugar snap pea. And I can't wait to tell you about this man. His name is Calvin Lamborn and he was obsessed with the pea. So he really wanted to develop a pea that was sweeter, but that was a mange tout kind of pea where you could eat the whole thing without having to do the hard work of shelling or drying the peas. So he had the idea of cross breeding a garden pea with an especially thick walled snow pea. Now, as we talked about snow peas, you know that thick walls actually aren't that common. Usually with a snow pea, it's this flat, thin wall and then tiny peas inside that makes the whole thing edible. So Calvin found the most thick wall snow peas he could find, and he cross bred them with super sweet garden peas. And the result in 1979, when I was still in diapers, was the delicious and fantastic sugar snap pea. I loved reading in Savior Savor, Savor S a V E U R magazine, the story of his discovery from his son Rod. Rod said, my dad was fascinated by these plants. He said his father developed Hundreds of unique varieties of sugar snap peas throughout his life, documenting the genetic differences that resulted in an infinite array of colorful pods. Yellow, magenta, purple with speckles, orchid like flowers, and winding edible tendrils. So in the early 2000s, the Lamborns, Calvin and his son Rod, were connected with sweet berry farms in upstate New York, and they got to plant their peas there in New York, and they were planted, they grew successfully, and suddenly they got distributed to all these top restaurants like Per Se and French Laundry. And Magicseed is Now home to 900 varieties of peas and sells more than a million pounds of seeds to commercial farms each year. Crazy, right? So this all came from this man who just loved cultivating new types of plants and discovering plants and literally just putting his hands in the dirt day after day. He loved the sugar snap pea. I got to watch a couple of videos of him online, and he just had an obsession for watching his plants grow and seeing what came of all of his hard work. He loved sugar snap peas and said one of the reasons he did is because it's an ideal snack for gardeners. Because unlike, say, carrots or radishes, when you pull those from the ground, they're going to need a good wash off and soak before you can just start munching, Right? But sugar snap peas are not this way. In fact, the minute you pull them from the vine, you can just go ahead and start snacking. I experienced this firsthand when we first started growing sugar snaps in my home garden. All my kids would pick the sugar snaps immediately when they saw them on the trellis. And honestly, I don't think I ever got to cook one single dish in the first few years because they ate all the sugar snaps right there in the kitchen garden. So Lamborn has developed lots of different types of sugar snaps, and he did develop some that are actually stringless. But the original, I think it's called simply the sugar snap pea, is still the most popular of all the varieties he's developed. And it does have a little string that you kind of pull off before you can munch on the entire. The entire pea itself, including the pod. So that is the background. That is the story of sugar snap peas. So just think back to before I was born. I know that seems like a terribly long time ago, but the fact that something like sugar snap peas, this whole new category of peas, did not even exist more than 40 years ago. And it's thanks to a gardener and a farmer who loved his plants, like Calvin did, that we can have this delicious Nutrient that's so good for our bodies and we can enjoy it with our families and friends and in our kitchen garden. So let's talk about sugar snaps. How are you going to get these from the garden onto your plate? First, let's talk about how the peas are currently grown in the US So I did a little bit of digging, no pun intended, and found out that most of this sugar snaps right now in the US Are grown in just three states. So that's Washington State, Montana and North Dakota. Now this makes sense because sugar snaps grow in cooler climates. They love cooler climates. So it makes sense that most of these peas that we currently enjoy are grown in just those few places. But there is a bummer about the fact that most of the peas we get to enjoy are shipped to us. So half of the sugar content of peas are going to turn to starch within six hours if the peas are kept at room temperature after harvest. So what this means is basically, unless they are super efficient at harvesting those peas, getting them into cool boxes or ice boxes, and then shipping them in non stop cool weather or cool temperatures, and then storing them at the grocery store in super cold temps, which sounds pretty unlikely that those peas are never going to warm up to room temperature during all that travel time. It means that all that nice, great sugar inside of your peas has become starch by the time it gets into your mouth. This is why if you've ever had the experience of eating a just harvested sugar snap pea versus a sugar snap pea from the grocery store, you can immediately tell the difference. They are like 100 times better. The other bad news is that most sugar snap peas show up not once but twice on the EWPS Guide to Pesticides on Produce. The EWP is the Environmental Working Group and they've come up with lists like the Dirty Dozen. Have you heard of that? Those are the dozen members of the produce that you really should not buy without having the organic seal in it, because it means you're going to be digesting a good bit of pesticides. So sugar snap peas come in at between 10 and 20 if they're grown internationally. So if you're ever at the store, you definitely want to check to see if your sugar snap peas were grown outside the US if they were, the chances are they're pretty high on the Dirty Dozen list and are likely are going to be carrying pesticides on the outside of those pretty little sugar pods. If they're grown inside the US it's nearer to 30, so it's not quite as bad as those that have been imported from outside the US but still pretty high. So this basically means that if you're buying a non organic snap peas, you're definitely almost for sure going to have pesticide residue on that sugar snap pod, which is a total bummer because we're not peeling these right. We're eating the entire thing. It's a mange too. So if you eat that whole thing, then you're unfortunately digesting whatever those non organic farmers have sprayed all over those plants to keep them healthy. So that's kind of a bummer. So what can we do about it? Well, there's really two great things that you could do to avoid pesticides on your peas. First, you want to shop locally. This goes back to the very first or second one of the first episodes here on the Grow youw Self podcast. So the more that you can buy locally, the more likelihood that you're your. You can check to find out what happened to your plants before they hit your plate. So if you're at the farmer's market or if you're in a csa, you have so much more access to the growers. So you can ask them, did you spray anything on these peas? What kind of growing method did you use to grow these beautiful sugar Snaps I'm about to enjoy? So that's the first thing you can shop more locally. Another thing you can do, just like on that first episode, is to eat seasonally. So more than likely, if you're eating a sugar snap pea, say, in the middle of summer, there's a high chance that those peas were grown outside of North America. Or let's say if you're listening from down under, hi, guys. And you're buying in the middle of December, January from sugar snap peas. Those were likely grown outside of your home. So. So unless the weather is nice and cool outside, you're going to be and you're purchasing sugar Snaps at the grocery store, it's highly likely that those sugar snaps weren't grown anywhere near your hometown. So maybe just don't buy them during that time period. Right. Or buy frozen. I guess that's another option during that time period. And then finally, of course, the better option is to just grow some of your own. That's the third step in the grow yourself change is to grow naturally. So let's talk about how you could do that. So as you've picked up on this full episode, peas are a cool, seasoned vegetable. So they're actually in the legume family. I think the Latin term is something like fabaceae. Or something like that. It starts with an F and ends with the AI sound, because it's Latin, of course. So the neat thing about the legume family is there are plants inside that family that range from cool season all the way to hot season. So in the middle of the hot season in your garden, you can be growing a member of the plant family, like black eyed peas or cow peas or crowder peas. But then all the way back on the other side of your temperatures, you can be growing cool season peas like the sugar snap. So it's so neat to see how much this plant family gives to us from the kitchen garden and how you can really be growing legumes nearly year round, no matter where you live. But this member of the legume family is going to be grown in the coolest part of the year. So they really like, you know, really mild temperatures. And they like to. Usually farmers say as long as the soil can be worked, in other words, as long as you can like, dig down, say, 1, 2, 3 inches down into your garden soil, then you can give planting peas a try. In fact, here in the Chicago area, though, we've still got probably two months worth of threats of frost. I'm planting peas this week. That's what my planting plan tells me is possible. So I'm going for it. All right, so you want to have a cool season around you. You want mild temperatures, not really passing, say, 75 DEGR, and you want to be growing them in a place with full sun. Now, the particular sugar snaps that Calvin invented, these are vining plants. They like to grow a minimum of six feet tall, and they have these cute little tendrils that love to grab onto a trellis or support structure as they do so. So you want to make sure that you're planting your. Your sugar snaps along a trellis or some type of tall structure that they can grab onto for support as they grow. Otherwise, the sugar snaps are going to snap. I love to plant mine with a new set of compost in the soil. These plants really need some help. The seeds need some help to open up and to start growing quickly. There's lots of science you can get into in terms of inoculating your seeds, but I usually trust my compost to do that for me. You can also soak your seeds overnight. So take your sugar snap pea seeds, soak them in some water overnight. This will start to break apart that little outer layer that keeps the seed from opening too soon and will kind of ripen and get your seeds ready to be planted out in the garden, when you plant them, don't use a heavy nitrogen fertilizer and don't fertilize them heavily with nitrogen. What will happen to your plant when you do that is you'll actually be causing your plant to produce more leaves than pea pods. And that's really not the goal. So don't use a heavy nitrogen before you plant or even as they start to grow, and just use compost to continue to encourage your plant to grow and support it. And then as the vines start to grow, you want to come through and support your vines with, say, some twine and keep them attached to the trellis. So if any time those little tiny tendrils that the plant continues to send out, if those don't grab onto that can support them, what typically happens is those vines will just stop growing. So you want to come in, say, once a week and trellis them against. Use a twine to tie them against the trellis. Snap peas, you'll find, have a thick, round. What's that called? Stem, main stem, that's actually hollow. And then they produce the prettiest little leaves and then the flowers. Now from these little orchid like flowers that can be all where the pea emerges. So as soon as you start to see flowers, that's a good sign that the peas are on their way. I like to plant peas pretty close together, so 1 to basically 2 inches apart and about 1 to 2 inches deep. And I plant them all along the trellis on both sides with about, I would say, six inches between both rows, but that's where the trellis is itself. You want to water your, your peas right at the root level. Don't water your leaves because they are prone to some mildew. So make sure you're just watering right at the root level. And then, like I said, just keep attaching them to the trellis as they keep growing. Sugar snaps, like I said, will grow all the way, say, six feet or more on a trellis. My sugar snaps last year grew almost to the top of my trellis before we hit the end of the season. So they're really beautiful. The flowers are go, and it's a great early spring variety to grow. If you're in a cooler climate and if you're in a more temperate climate, this is actually a great thing to grow during the actual winter. So for our clients in Houston, our rooted garden clients, we actually plant peas to grow throughout the entirety of winter. Now, if you don't want to go for the trellis type, there is a bush type for the Sugar snap as well, and that's called Sugar Ann. These only grow about 2ft tall and supposedly mature a little bit early. So if you're wanting to just grow a ton of bush variety of peas and still get that sugar snap flavor, then that is a great option for you. Excuse me. So when you grow these, there are so many different ways to enjoy them. Like we said, Calvin really developed these peas to be enjoyed right off the vine. So everyone says this really one of the few vegetables that just tastes amazing raw. So enjoy it right away raw and put it in in a salad or dip it in some hummus. If you are going to cook it, you want to do very minimal cooking, like a very quick stir fry or something like that, where it's literally in the heat for just a few short minutes. Because these peas are just so fragile and so flavorful, they really do not need to be cooked down in any form or fashion. If you're into preserving your peas, you could pickle them in a brine or ferment them or something like that to make them fun to snack on when it warms up. It'd be a super fun summer snack. I have to tell you this fun story about, speaking of buying peas about harvest snaps, have you seen this? This is a packaged product, probably near chips or something like that. So they're marketed as peas that you can snack on like a potato chip. And they actually look like a sugar snap pea. But I was doing my research and found out they're not sugar snaps at all. So those are not sugar snaps that have been like dehydrated or something into a pea snack. Instead, they are ground up garden peas that are then shaped into pea shapes. Surprising, right? Not really. So next time you're tempted to buy a harvest snap package from the grocery, just remember they might taste better if you just grow your own. All right, we are going to close up this episode with a food fight. We're going to have the sugar snap pea go to war with the garden pea. So we're going to take the traditional garden pea that's been around for thousands of years and see how it stacks up against the sugar snap pea in terms of its daily vitamins and what all is included in one serving. So we're talking here about, I don't know, 100 grams of peas. All right, so if you've got 100 grams of a Sugar Snap pea, you've got about 42 calories. But if you've got 100 grams of A Typical Garden pea, you've got about 62 calories. So you're going to get about 20 more calories per gram for 100 grams of peas. So, you know, if you're counting calories, then you might want to watch out because garden peas have 20 more. But here's where it might really matter in terms of carbs. So Sugar snaps have in 100 grams, they have 7.5 grams of carbs. But in a garden pea There are 11 grams of carbs. So if you are trying to watch your carb count, then you're definitely going to want to go with the Sugar Snap. So so far for our dieters or those who are watching their numbers, it looks like the Sugar Snap is coming up on top. But now let's talk about fiber. Fiber for the sugar snap is 2.6 grams, while fiber for the garden pea is 4 grams. So if you're wanting to get more fiber in your diet, you actually need some more garden peas, which is honestly surprising to me because I would have thought the pea with the shell on it would have been more fibrous. But who am I to argue with Healthline? Alright, now let's talk about protein. When it comes to protein, the Sugar Snap pea has 2.8 grams. In 100 grams of PE, the garden pea has 4 grams. So here we are with protein, it looks like the garden pea is going to be a better variety for you. And this makes sense, right? So these peas are stored, they can be eaten dry throughout the winter and they're going to have a higher protein value for you. So if you're a plant powered individual, if you are a vegetarian, you want to make sure you're getting your garden peas in maybe a little bit more than your Sugar Snaps. Let's talk about vitamin A. A Sugar Snap pea is going to give you 22% of your daily value and 100 grams of sugar snaps and you're going to get 34% of your vitamin A in a garden pea. For vitamin K, you're going to get 31% of your daily value in a sugar snap and 24% in a garden pea. So the Sugar Snaps are on top there. The real kick is vitamin C. Would you believe that in 100 grams of sugar snap peas, you get 100% of your daily value of vitamin C And you only get 13% of your daily value when you eat 100 grams of garden peas. That's pretty crazy, right? So it looks like when it comes to counting calories and carbs and getting more vitamin C, the Sugar Snaps win the day. But if you're looking for more fiber and more protein, more vitamin A and K, then you need to go with garden peas. Or if you're like me, just eat a bunch of both of them. I hope that you have enjoyed this podcast all about the amazing Sugar Snap peas. My takeaway from this whole story is that, oh my goodness, we have so many people to thank for the good food that we get to eat and we should really take advantage of the fact that we can grow our own. Just think about it. Your food, your Sugar Snaps could be covered in pesticides, the sugars have turned to starches and a lot of the flavor is lost when all we do is buy the grocery store variety. But when we eat locally, when we buy locally, when we eat seasonally, and when we grow a little bit of our own naturally, we get to enjoy all the goodness of this great food in our own garden. I just think it's so inspiring to grow a little bit of our own today. After this podcast, I'm gonna head out to my garden and plant some peas and I hope that you feel inspired to do the same. So check out the Sugar Snap peas if you wanna grow them on a trellis, or check out the sugar and peas if you wanna grow them in a bush. Whatever you do, try your hand at growing a little bit of your own. And let's all say a big thank you to Calvin Lombard for coming up with the idea of having garden peas. Have a baby with snow peas so that we can all enjoy the deliciousness of the Sugar Snap peas. The more you know, guys, the better you grow. Thanks so much for listening to the Grow youw Self podcast. I hope you have a great week and I cannot wait to see you back here next week to learn more surprising stories about the food we eat and inspiring conversations to help you grow your snacks to the next level. Thanks for listening. I'll see you later. Thanks so much for listening to the Grow youw Self podcast. I love hanging out with you here every week and I feel like it's never more important to do so than it is right now. Listen, I don't know about you, but I think we're all being affected by the coronavirus and our self distancing and social distancing and all this stuff. So I want to just encourage you to hang in there, to get support, to take care of yourself, to take time to eat well, to get outside, to exercise, to write down your goals and to keep going for the things that you care for the most most. And I want you to know I am here to support you. We'll have lots of resources coming your way to help you grow yourself to the next level, and one of the great ways we do that is through the Green Thumb Quiz. So if you haven't already, come check it out@gardenary.com quiz. We will help you find out your current level in the garden and then give you lots of inspiration and instruction to help you grow to the next level. Hang in there. I'm thinking about you and the Gardenary Team and the Ruta Garden Team are here to support you. I can't wait to hang out with you more next week. Thanks again for listening. I'll see you soon.