Custom has it that if you are to find a pea pod with nine or more peas in it that you can make a wish for whatever you heart desires. Now with the cold snap that we often experience in spring I’m willing to bet quite a few early seed sowers would have wished for milder weather. Reports filter in to me each spring of over-enthusiastic gardeners who have had their young seedlings totally blackened by a late frost.

Amongst the usual casualties are cabbage, cauliflower, lettuce, spring onion, and beetroot, both in the open ground and within unheated glasshouses or polytunnels. All I can say to them is keep the chin up, don’t be downhearted, as it’s early in the growing season, so you’ve plenty of time to set a new batch of seeds. Let peas be one of them, and I can assure you that with a little care you will have a bountiful harvest.

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