If youv'e never had fresh peas, you're in for a real treat.

Those are dwarf peas, vines only a couple of feet high, but I think they do better with a little support and to keep the fruits off the ground. A lot of people put branched twigs into the ground for this purpose.

Can't tell you when to plant them as I'm unfamiliar with your location and zone. I would think 80's might be a little high but I don't know how quickly it will cool off there.

As ltilton said, they are a dwarf pea. Even though the packet says they don't have to be trellised, I would anyway. You could plant them in a solid block and they will support each other but I haven't tried it.

As for when to harvest, you harvest them when the pea pods have plumped up and the peas have filled the pods. I like my peas fresh off the plant (raw). Snap peas are very sweet and juicy.

One more thing. If you want a sizable harvest of peas, you have to plant a lot. Even a small harvest still tastes great though.

Rodney

If you don't trellis them plant them very close together so they clump up and self-support. Still, a horizontal line/string trellis between 1-2 ft. off the ground wouldn't be a bad idea.

They may grow slowly during the very cold of winter (if you get a colder-than-normal winter), but they should do fine where you're at. They won't die, but they may slow down a bit if you get a cold snap.

I make my first planting around Thanksgiving, last planting around February 2. Harvest April through May. Sugar Ann is a dwarf snap pea which means they do well without any trellis. It is a snap pea, which means you pick and eat the pods any time the pods are large enough. Since they are snap peas you will not need near the plants as you would for shelling peas.
{{gwi:119321}}

I don't trellis mine, either. I plant them closely and let them "support" each other as they bush/mound up. Very few pods drag the ground.

I have some friends that do put up a horizontal support line about 1-2 ft. above the plants...they do it because they say it makes it easier for them to find pods amongst the leaves as the plants stake up a bit. I don't bother with it.

I plant my dwarf peas on the same trellis that I use for my tall varieties. I plant the tall peas first and when they are a few inches high I plant the dwarfs a couple inches in front of them.

The way I see it is that the tall varieties start putting on pods at about 3-4 feet high so all that space between the ground and pods is essentially being wasted. So by planting the dwarfs in front of them, I'm using that wasted space. This method gives me twice the row feet I would have gotten from just planting the talls alone.

nc-crn and farmerdill- What seed spacings do you use when you plant your dwarf peas in blocks?

Rodney

Appproximately one inch apart in the row, rows 10 inches apart. No more than 4 rows at a time so there is a place to walk when harvesting. I use pea plates in a mechanical planter.

Jennie, I can't help with your climate questions, but snap peas are wonderful fresh. Since you've never grown them before, you could always start small and see what you think before committing a large space to them. But if you've got the space available, definitely go for it. (As for the weather, if you're only talking a couple dollars for a packet of seeds, try it and see what you get -- if they don't grow well, save the rest of the pack for late winter/early spring and see if that works better.)

As far as support, I've grown dwarf snap peas in containers with an inexpensive tomato cage (the flimsy WM kind) in the middle to help get them started. They do cling to each other, but they also cling to the wire cage and I think this helps them withstand wind a bit better.

For harvesting, snap peas are eaten whole -- you eat both the pod and the peas inside, all at once. The pods are nice and crunchy when raw. You can also add them to stir-frys or just steam them as a side dish. We tend to mostly eat them raw in our house. They are one of those "pick a handful while out in the garden and eat half of them before you get back to the kitchen" kind of veggies. :)

Good luck!

Kathy