Peas and sweetpeas

[purplepidjin]

I planted edible peas in with sweetpeas, thinking it would look pretty when they flowers and I could get some yummy things too.

Now I have lots of pretty white pea flowers, and lots of young pods too. But, erm, how can I be sure they're edible peas and not poisonous sweetpea pods?

Big oops from Pidj perhaps - should I write them off this year and be more sensible next time?

What sort of peas did you plant? What sort of sweet peas?

Erm, I'm hoping I planted early peas and late summer sweetpeas! But I've binned the packets now stupid muppet

Well my peas are much further along than my sweet peas. However, given that sweet peas are poisonous I wouldnt risk it - sorry!

That's what I thought

On the bright side you do have nice pretty white flowers now (which are probably your eating peas) and you will have lots of different coloured flowers (your sweet peas) in a few weeks time. Not much consolation I'm afraid. Better safe than sorry though.

don't sweet pea pods look different from eating pea pods?
and flowers ought to be much bigger surely?

sweet pea pods looked like young pea pods with under developed peas (a bit like something like a mange tout). Sweet pea flowers are on the whole bigger and more showy (though not all are) but they are still pea flowers.

This is the problem. If I were looking then I could probably tell the difference but I'm not so I would counsel caution.

Ah, so if I hang on a bit the pea pods will swell up but the sweet pea ones won't???

Are sweet peas deadly poisonous or just unpleasantly poisonous?

see I don't recall being told that they were poisonous, and I was the sort of child who felt spooked just seeing deadly nightshade, incase the impulse to eat them overwhelmed me!

I have copied the following from wikipedia:

"Unlike the edible pea, there is evidence that seeds of members of the genus Lathyrus, including sweet pea, are toxic if ingested in quantity. "

From the description I dont think they are deadly but if one were to mistake them for ordinary peas and eat them in quantity then there could be problems. From what I read on wikipedia they fall into the unpleasantly poisonous camp rather than the deadly poisonous camp.

I'll test them on dp then

I'm pretty sure the sweets aren't through yet so should be ok. Thank you very much