Purple Peas
Did you know garden pea (Pisum Sativum) blossoms, sprouts, tendrils and peas are all edible? The blooms are quite pretty and do not have a strong scent.
The blossoms, sprouts and pods of the Sugar Magnolia Tendril Pea are all edible.
When I lived in Oakland, Calif., I grew one variety of edible peas with purple blooms: the Sugar Magnolia Tendril Pea. I purchased the seeds from Baker Creek.
Sugar Magnolia (at left) and Super Sugar Snap (at right)
Sugar Magnolia Tendril Pea is a sugar snap variety, where the inner peas and outer pod can be eaten together in its entirety. This is also sometimes referred to as “mangetout.”
I found the outer pod to be bland and tough, so I let the inner pea plump up, then removed the outer shell ate the inside peas raw. They were delicious this way with a pleasant, sweet flavor.
The bottom of the stems get brown and spindly as the plant ages.
As the vines age, the lower leaves will brown. In the future for aesthetics, I will put some lower growing cool-season edible plants near the base to help cover the spindly bare stems of the peas. In our USDA climate zone 10, this might include plants like lettuce, sweet alyssum, tom-thumb peas or magic-carpet snap dragons.
These vines can stretch up to 8 ft tall! I let them go a little wild and drape around a 4 ft trellis. This may have hindered the productivity, but we still got some nice flowers and peas to eat!
I also enjoy growing sweet pea blossoms (e.g., Lathyrus Odoratus and Lathyrus Latifolius) because they are beautiful and fragrant, but the toxicity makes them inedible for human consumption.
Do you grow any types of peas? If so, what kind?
Photos by Breeze.