- From the Univest pea-picking studios at Lehigh Valley Public Media in Bethlehem, P.A., it is time for another short but sweet episode of chemical-free horticultural high jinks, You Bet Your Garden.

Peas are one of the classic garden crops, but timing is beyond important.

Whether you're growing Asian snow peas, southern snap peas, or the classic English shelling peas, you have to plant them on time if you want to enjoy those legendary June peas.

I'm your host, Mike McGrath, and on today's You Bet Your Garden, we'll learn ya how to plant perfect peas.

And of course, we will take lots of your fabulous phone call questions, comments, tips, tricks, suggestions, and luminously lethargic lamentations.

So keep your eyes and/or ears right here, cats and kittens, because it's all coming up faster than you saying, "Ho, ho, ho" right after this.

- Support for You Bet Your Garden is provided by the Espoma Company.

Offering a complete selection of natural organic plant foods and potting soils.

More information about Espoma and the Espoma Natural Gardening Community can be found at... - Welcome to another thrilling episode of You Bet Your Garden.

Broadcasting from the Universe Public Media Center in Bethlehem, P.A.

I am your host, Mike McGrath.

Coming up later in the show, we are following this year's tradition of holding your gardening hands at the right time of year.

We taught you how to take care of your sprouts and your seed starting in plenty of time to do it.

And this week we're going to talk about planting your peas, snow peas, English shelling peas, sugar snap peas.

Timing is so essential.

You really got to listen to this one, cats and kittens, and do what I say, and you'll be a pea-picking fool.

And of course, we're going to take lots of your fabulous phone calls, beginning with Linda at... Linda, welcome to You Bet Your Garden!

- Hi, Mike.

- Hello, Linda, how are you?

- I'm doing great, I'm waiting for the Arctic blast to hit us today.

- Oh, where are you?

- I am about 50 miles northeast of Nashville, Tennessee.

- Oh, OK. What can we do you for?

- My property has most of it is forested, so I have one area where I have put raised beds in.

Unfortunately, it's about 20 feet away from a 70-foot-tall magnolia tree.

And every time I turn the soil in my raised bed, I run across all these roots from the magnolia tree.

- OK. - And I haven't had any luck with my vegetables growing in my raised bed.

- Of course not.

- So I'm wondering if it's because of these roots?

- Yes, it is, but not in the sense that they're allelopathic, or something like that.

Magnolias are kind of unique in that their roots don't go down, they go out.

So these are some of the most stable trees that you can grow.

But it also means that you really can't plant anything around them, because these fibrous, these rope-like roots are reaching out as far sideways as a healthy plant root would reach out down.

Now, how long have you had these garden beds there?

- About 18 years now.

And when I first moved in, I built them, and I've amended them.

I had the soil tested last year at the University of Tennessee, their extension here in the county.

And the soil tested fine.

- Yeah, there's nothing wrong with your soil.

There's nothing wrong with your soil, there's nothing wrong with the roots, except the fact that the roots are where your plants want to be.

So an unusual mistake, and don't feel bad, because I wasn't sure that I would have known this, is you can't plant garden beds near a magnolia.

You've got two basic options.

You can spend the springtime really attacking this with a chainsaw.

Go around the inner parts of your garden beds and chainsaw until all the roots are out.

And then what you would do is you would invest in garden edging that you would put on the outside, drive into the outside of the raised bed frames to keep the roots from coming back in.

That might... That's an unusual answer, but I think it might be the best for you.

And then, you know, fill the beds up with high-quality topsoil, compost, Perlite.

And, you know, make sure those sneaky roots stay out of there, and you should be OK.

Otherwise, you're going to have to seal off what you have and build new raised beds on top of that, that the roots can't get to.

- All right.

Sounds good, Mike.

- Of course it sounds good.

I said it.

- All right.

Thank you, sir.

- My pleasure.

- Have a great day.

- You, too.

Bye-bye.

- All right.

Bye-bye.

- Julie, welcome to You Bet Your Garden.

- Hi, Mike.

Thank you so much for taking my call.

- Well, thank you for making it.

- I'm a huge fan of your show.

- Where are you?

- I'm in Columbia, Maryland.

- All right, now, you had your... You either had your bulk compost tested, or it came with paperwork.

- Yes, the local county, our county produces compost that you can buy from the county.

But they post the lab reports just online.

They test it regularly and they post them just on the Internet.

- OK. And what...?

Go ahead.

What...?

Go ahead, and then I talk.

What composting facility is it?

- It's just the Howard County, Maryland...

It might be the Alpha Ridge facility, but I think it's just the Howard County Compost Facility.

- Boy, you're breaking my heart.

Before the pandemic hit... No, seriously, I would be invited to come down on International Compost Day and give a talk, and the facility would give out free samples, go over the test results, and I had held them up as like a shining star.

But you said, you know, and let's be honest, right, what percent of this information is totally useless or written in a foreign language?

- Well, I yeah, I didn't understand the report very well, which is why I wrote in.

In particular, the fecal matter seemed very high, and I didn't know whether... - I got you circled.

- Is that like, animals, is that animal fecal matter?

Is that human fecal matter?

- Human.

And is that fecal matter safe for ornamental plants?

I assume it's not safe for growing vegetables.

So, I just wasn't really sure how to read it.

- This is an interesting misconception, OK?

The amount of fecal matter that is allowed in good compost is under 1,000 MPN/G.

And yours tests out at 2,400.

So as you can imagine, throughout time, plants have grown naturally, seeking out poop.

You know, the whole thing of cattle ranching is they eat the grass, they poop, they feed the grass.

There are, you know, this is a cycle of nature.

I talked before on the show about how birds eat hot peppers and poop them later on, when they're done eating the flesh and...

But they could not germinate the seeds unless they went through this high-level nitrogen fecal matter.

In our world, fecal matter at this level could only be two things.

One, they're rerouting a lot of cow manure from factory farms, But I'll even tell you right now, cows don't have high fecal matter.

They're pretty low and cold on all the different scales.

So, I'm thinking you got biosolids.

Biosolids are what's left after they clean all the, I'm going to say it.

I'm going to say it!

After they clean all the crap out of our water, and then, biosolids become this incredibly complex amount of soil-like media.

There should be a way to recycle this stuff safely.

But a lot of times, it is not.

And of course, you're not allowed to use biosolids in organic gardening at all, period.

I'm so glad you called because one of the things I want to get across is this has nothing to do with your plants.

It has to do with your health and your soil health and the health of your local water.

Biosolids should never be handled with bare hands.

Admittedly, if the nitrogen content is high enough, biosolids make a great fertilizer for sweet corn.

But you don't want to be using this in a home garden where even with gloves, you're handling the product.

It's two-and-a-half times the maximum that you're supposed to have.

Now, did you buy a bunch?

- No, I hadn't bought any yet.

- Great.

- So I'm really glad I asked first.

- Great... - Yeah, and you always said, you've said to, you know, check the lab test.

So, that's why I was checking the lab tests.

- You did everything right.

- I followed your advice.

- There is a group called the Composting Council.

I want you to go to their website and investigate this.

But a couple of other things I noticed reading over this Sanskrit is that the compost wasn't finished.

There's a lot of things that I don't like here, but thank you for not buying it.

If anybody does have compost or anything like that with a high fecal coliform level... you know, do what you want, but don't touch it and try to keep it away from waterways and pets, and everything like that.

You're exactly correct, this should not be.

- Well, thank you so much.

- Thank you.

Thank you for being "proactive".

- Thanks again.

I love your show.

I've been listening to you for years, so thank you so much.

- Thank you so much.

Bye-bye.

Heather, welcome to You Bet Your Garden!

- Thank you.

- How are you doing?

- I'm great, how are you?

- I am just Ducky!

Ducky is now using his mask as a scarf, and he can't wait till the water unfreezes.

Where are you?

- I am in Rockville, Tennessee, which is about 30 minutes south of Nashville.

- What can we do for you?

- All right, so I have got about a half-acre of property, and on that property, we have got 23 mature hackberry trees.

And with those beautiful trees are woolly aphids.

So, yeah, we have actually kind of alternated over the last few years, ordering ladybugs and green leaf swings.

- Okay, let me stop you right there, because that's a good thing to get started with.

Aphid, right?

Latch onto aphid.

Of course, ladybugs and lace wings in reverse order are the biggest predators of aphids.

But you ain't got aphids.

You got woolly aphids, which have evolved to have this waxy white surface that doesn't allow the aphids...

The beneficial insects to do their job.

So it's a nice idea, and in this case, the adjective is more important than the noun.

- Interesting.

- OK. How tall are your hackberries?

- They're about 40 feet tall.

- And you want to keep them.

- Absolutely.

- OK. We're going to have to go sideways here, I don't know.

To the best of my understanding, we have not yet identified a beneficial insect that battles woolly aphids.

The best treatment for woolly aphids, believe it or not, is a freezing cold winter.

- OK, which we've definitely had.

- Well, you've had freezing cold, you've also had beach weather.

- Yes, we have that today.

Yeah, exactly, so I think it's the same as me on this date, you're going to have like a 74 degree day, you're going to be out there and, "Oh, that winter wasn't that bad".

And then tomorrow, the Arctic blast comes down and brings us ice storms and four inches of snow.

- Yes, absolutely.

- It's hard to say what a non-contiguous cold spell would mean.

What I'm going to suggest... As soon... Really, right now would not be bad, hire a landscaper and have them spray horticultural oil.

Our best bet is to smother the pests.

Now if you can get this done while it's cold, you want to use a true dormant oil.

That's a petroleum product.

As we move into the warmer weather, you use a light summer spray.

It's still oil, but it's a vegetable oil that's been highly refined, and it smothers them.

That's what we're looking to do.

We're smothering them.

- Okay.

- Are the trees mulched, or anything else?

- Nope, they're just in the ground, kind of as is, nothing around them.

- I think a couple of runs of horticultural oil, say a dormant oil spray soon, and a summer spray in like May.

You'll certainly knock down their numbers tremendously.

- Well, that sounds great.

Thank you so much.

I really appreciate it.

- Well, thank you, Heather.

We appreciate all the people we have listening in that part of the world.

- Yeah, we love your show.

- Well, that's good, I love you guys, too.

Keeps me from panhandling under I-95, you know?

- That's a good thing to avoid.

- Yeah.

I don't know.

Sometimes you get a good day, you know?

- Well, that's true.

You can always do it on the side, see how you feel about it.

- All right, Heather, thank you for calling and good luck with your woolly aphids.

As the season advances, so shall the Question of the Week, which means that it is time for us to deliver top tips for lots of spring peas.

I know you may not like the idea of putting anything in the ground this early in the season, but there is a very good reason to get peas planted before April 1st.

They are called "spring peas" for a reason.

Peas are not a summer crop.

As soon as it gets hot, the vines will wither up and depart this mortal coil.

If you wait until it seems a reasonable time to plant, your vines may shrivel and die just as the first peas are ready for picking.

Get your seeds in the ground before April Fool's Day, and they'll have all of April and May to grow big and strong so you can be picking lots of peas all of June.

Now, your basic pea-picking options are sweet and crispy snow peas, pick them while they're still nice and small, and flat, and enjoy them, pod and all, in salads and stir fries.

These are my personal favorite type of pea.

Southern favorites snap or sugar peas, let the pods get a little fodder on the vine before picking, then zip off and discard the strings, and eat these sweet treats, pod and all, as well.

And then, of course, you got your basic English garden, or shelling peas, where you zip open the pod and just eat the tasty peas inside.

However, even snow pea seeds won't germinate outside if the weather turns or stays frigid.

So pre-sprout your seeds inside instead.

You'll pick peas for six weeks this spring, instead of just two days.

Surround your seeds with slightly wet paper towels.

Put them in a Ziploc bag, but don't seal it!

And leave them out in the open at room temperature.

The seed should sprout in 48 hours.

If it's nice and warm, plant them all.

If it's cold outside, plant a few seeds for luck.

Wait a few days for the weather to change, and then, plant the rest - for intelligence.

Dig a little trench next to a trellis, fence or tall, thin sticks jammed into the ground so your vines will have something to climb.

Add a tablespoon of wood ash per foot of row to sweeten the soil.

Drop in those sprouted peas.

Don't be afraid to crowd them to an inch apart.

They love it.

Cover with an inch of compost or seed-starting mix and water well.

Then be brave!

If a cold wave hits, it may be a while before those sprouts shoot through the surface of the soil, but they will.

Water weekly, if it don't rain.

For food, shovel some nice, fresh finished compost around the plants when they get to be around six inches tall.

Water weekly if it don't rain.

or use a gentle liquid organic fertilizer.

Now, be sure to pick promptly when the peas start coming.

The more you pick, the more you get.

And the smaller they are, the sweeter they'll be.

OK?

Now for the advanced class.

Get some pea and bean inoculate at the garden center, or through a catalog, and roll your seeds around in the flour-like stuff before you bury them.

Bacteria in that powder will form a symbiotic relationship with your plants, enabling them to suck plant-feeding nitrogen right out of the air.

This also works with "string beans".

In fact, these bacteria work their magic on all peas and beans, and other potting legumes.

It's way cool.

Here's a great science experiment.

Start some peas with and some without the inoculum in little containers on a windowsill.

Pull a few up after a month or so.

The inoculated plants should have little round growths on their roots, showing that bacteria and plant have become one better organism that's capable of feeding itself.

If you miss the planting window this spring, do not plant late.

These cool weather-loving vines will just burn up in July.

Instead, plan on putting in a full crop.

A full crop?

It may be a full crop, but it's going to be a fall crop to me.

Pick the coldest spot in your garden, i.e.

afternoon shade.

Put the seeds in the ground 90 days before your first expected frost date in the fall.

Keep the young plants well-watered, and perhaps even cooled with some shade cloth or the shadow of taller plants like corn or tomatoes till summer's most torrid days are done.

And think good thoughts.

Remember, these plants like cool weather, so light frosts won't bother them a bit.

Northerners can generally get a nice run of peas.

Lots of the frigid winter frosts hold off for a while, and you're out there every day picking.

Picking peas every day is super important.

Same as with beans.

And now a word or 20 about the final height of your plants.

Read catalog descriptions carefully.

Most, maybe all snow peas have a bush style of growing that only requires about 2-3 feet of support.

The word "container" is also a good indication of petite-ness.

You like that?

Snap peas are variable, but most require at least five feet of support, which is good if you want to be picking the pods that are standing up high.

English shelling peas are the tallest.

Nine feet high is not unusual.

I have a ten-foot high trellis that I've bent in half, so they climb up one side, and then tumble down the other.

Above all else, refer to the final height on the seed packet or catalogue description.

If it isn't listed, look up the same variety on a different website.

Oregon sugar peas and Green Arrow shelling peas are going to be the same height no matter where you get them.

Well, that's your was a somewhat exhaustive look at pea planting, now, wouldn't it?

Luckily for yous, you can read this information over at your leisure or your leisure, because the Question of the Week appears in print at the Gardens Alive website.

Just click the link for the Question of the Week at our website, which is still and will forever be... Gardens Alive supports the You Bet Your Garden Question the Week, and you will always find the latest Question of the Week at the Gardens Alive website.

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Yikes!

My producer is threatening to poach my peas if we don't get out of this studio.

I think we're out of time.

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It's all at that precious website...

I'm your host, Mike McGrath.

And if the folks on the second floor keep not catching on, I'll see you again next week.