🌱✗ Tested and false“Beans and peas fix nitrogen that feeds the crops growing beside them”
Legumes genuinely do fix nitrogen. What they do not do is hand much of it to a neighbour while both are still growing: transfer between living plants in the same season is small and hard to pin down. The substantial nitrogen, tens of kilos per hectare from clover and beans, arrives when the legume dies and breaks down.
Our read That makes it a rotation benefit wearing a companion's clothes. The effect is real, it just arrives a season later than the folklore claims.
What to do: Follow peas and beans with a hungry leafy crop the next season, rather than expecting this year's cabbage to be fed by the beans growing next to it. Leave the roots in the ground when you clear the plants.
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- Legume nitrogen reviewSame-season transfer between living plants is minor and unquantified; substantive nitrogen comes from residue decomposition
“Get your peas in as early as you can in spring”
The earliest possible sowing in cold, wet Scottish soil is a gamble that usually loses. The advice is from March onwards, but unheated soil below about 7°C means the seed sits and rots. A March sowing into modules indoors gives a faster, more reliable start than the same seed in cold ground.
What to do: Sow into modules or guttering indoors in March and plant out once the soil has warmed a little. Direct-sow from mid-April in most of Scotland. Do not push for February.
In Scotland: The English advice to sow peas in February is reasonable in the south and a waste of seed here. Cold wet soil is slug heaven, and a February-sown pea in Scotland is slug food before it sees daylight.
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- RHSSow March onwards; earlier sowings risk rotting in cold wet soil
“Peas and sweet peas are the same family so you can eat sweet pea pods”
Sweet peas are in the legume family but are not edible — the pods and seeds are toxic. Sweet pea seeds are specifically flagged as poisonous if eaten. The plants share a name and a family and absolutely nothing else that matters for eating.
Our read A child rummaging in a garden seeing pea-like pods is the realistic scenario here, and the distinction between edible peas and toxic sweet peas is worth making loudly.
What to do: Grow edible peas for eating and sweet peas for flowers, and label the rows so no one confuses them. Teach children the difference.
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- RHSSweet pea seeds and pods are poisonous if eaten
“Even dwarf peas need support — they flop over without it”
Dwarf peas are shorter but still benefit from support. Pushing pea sticks or twiggy branches into the ground is advised even for dwarf varieties. Without anything to cling to, a row of dwarf peas in wind or heavy rain flattens and the pods rot on the ground.
What to do: Push twiggy sticks into the row when the plants are about 10cm tall. The peas climb them and the pods stay off the soil. The same twigs work for the whole season.
In Scotland: A wet Scottish June followed by a gale flattens unsupported peas in an afternoon. Pea sticks are not decorative here — they are the difference between a harvest and a mess.
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- RHSPush pea sticks or twiggy branches into the ground for dwarf varieties
