Hurst Green Shaft

Why it suits Ireland

Ireland’s advantage with peas is that we rarely get the heat that stops a maincrop setting pods, so a variety like this, which needs a longer run than a first early, can be grown here with more confidence than in a hot summer climate. What we do get is humidity, and that is where the built-in resistance earns its place.

At around 75cm it is tall enough to need proper support but short enough to stay upright behind netting in normal Irish wind. That puts it in a useful middle ground: the yield of a maincrop without the sail area of a metre-tall mangetout.

It holds an RHS Award of Garden Merit, and unusually for an award-holding vegetable, the reason gardeners keep growing it is straightforwardly the taste.

Growing notes

Sow from April into early June, 5cm deep, 5cm apart, in a flat 20cm drill with 75cm between rows. Give it more space between rows than an early variety needs, both for air movement and because you will be reaching in to pick.

Put rigid mesh or netting between stout stakes in at sowing time. A fully podded row of this at 75cm in wet weather is heavy, and a support pushed in later will lean.

Water at flowering and through pod fill. In a dry Irish June the plants can be caught out, and drought stress is what invites powdery mildew in weeks later.

Pick from mid-July, twice a week, taking the pods while they are still bright and glossy. Pods left until they dull and the seed hardens are starchy and they signal the plant to stop cropping. Anything you cannot eat within a day is better podded and frozen the same evening, because the sugars convert to starch within hours of picking.

When the row is spent, cut it at soil level and leave the roots and their nitrogen-fixing nodules in the ground for whatever follows.