Do you plant your peas on St. Patrick's Day?

Going down the rabbit hole on a pea-centric quest

Flurries were falling from the sky yesterday morning and I was planting snap peas. Why? Because it’s what I do every Saint Patrick’s Day. I heard about the tradition after moving to Pittsburgh where every gardener I met would mention that they always plant their peas on March 17th. I’m not one to skip out on a gardening tradition so – sun or snow – I was going to get those peas in the ground.

I was curious about when this tradition got started in Pennsylvania so I did a quick search of local newspapers. The Daily News of Lebanon, PA included this paragraph on the front page of their March 17th edition in 1910:

St. Patrick's Day each year is regarded by many gardeners as a propitious time for planting sweet peas and other plants and vegetables, and despite the falling snow and damp atmosphere, many citizens with gardens at their homes were to be seen planting seeds of various kinds. There is a well founded and widely prevailing superstition that seeds planted on this day thrive better than if planted at any other time.

Many businesses included a pea reminder in their ads as well. Here’s an ad from Darlington Nursery from the Saint Patrick’s Day newspaper of The Pittsburgh Press in 1935:

Also, a ten-foot tree for a buck? Amazing!

---

---

Diana Parks, The Pittsburgh Press’ garden writer, wrote about the pea tradition annually. Here’s the start of her column from 1941:

I was starting to notice that all these mentions were specific to sweet peas, the flowers, rather than edible garden peas. Every year when I say I’ve been planting peas, I’ve been planting my sugar snap peas. Have I been doing it wrong? That sent me down another rabbit hole.

I always imagined that snap peas have been around for centuries, if not millennia, but it turns out that the modern snap pea was created in 1979 by Calvin Lamborn. The Idaho botanist had come across a unique mutant pea with a thicker pod and he crossed it with a snow pea and, voila, the snap pea was born. In an article I read, Calvin points out that he really only re-invented the snap pea as he believes a similar pea existed in France in the 19th century.

By the late 1970s, The Pittsburgh Press garden columnists were starting to expand from just sweet peas. This is from March of 1974:

St. Patrick’s Day is the traditional day in these parts for planting sweet peas, and garden peas are just as hardy.

I decided I wasn’t done with my Saint Patrick’s Day planting yet. I headed back outside with some sweet pea seeds – I had a seed packet left over from last year. I planted the”knee hi” sweet pea along the wire fence around our veggie patch. When they grow in, they’ll hopefully soften the edges of the angular garden beds and make the whole area look a little more natural. I’ll let you know how it turns out.

Have you planted your peas already? What kind? Or do you have other spring garden traditions? I’d love to hear about them.

---

And one more thing: As I read through garden-related content from local newspapers of the past century, I was especially delighted by the illustrations accompanying many of the articles. I love this hand-drawn diagram from The Pittsburgh Press:

---