Tom Thumb Garden Pea

These were so adorable in pots lined up on my back porch. My 6 year old had a great time watching them grow and turn out these wee little pods with full size peas inside. However, the germination rate was very poor. It 4 tries before I got 3 plants to grow. I planted a second time and only got 2 more plants to germinate, one was so stunted that it never formed a pod. These were a cute experiment and had nice sweet peas, but we probably won't grow them again. The plants didn't last long after I pulled 3 pods off of each of them. They just shriveled.

I tried for several years to grow these peas inside a container, they germinate quickly, sprout up fairly quickly, then peter out and die. I have tried variance of potting material, containers, and methods and it fails every time. It seems others had success planting them outside but they tout they are great for containers... they are not.

I live in zone 8, southern Mississippi and I tried these peas but I think that I either did not plant enough in my pot or I planted them at the wrong time because I did not get but maybe 5 or 6 pods in all. I do think that I will try these again next year.

I'm a balcony vegetable gardener so I'm always on the lookout for hybrids that will provide high yields in small space. I was really excited for these peas! They were a bit slow to start - I planted three seeds, and I was almost ready to start something else in that pot, but one by one, they came up. After that, really easy care and they started flowering and producing pods really quickly. And they really are super cute plants. The peas taste good, but they just don't produce enough for more than garden snacking. I'm going to switch to a small, bush style pea variety, instead of this tiny dwarf. I do think this would make great spring ground cover!

At first I tried to grow a couple of these indoors and they didn't do very well. A plant would produce 2-3 tiny pods with 1-2 peas inside and then it would dry up and die. Then I planted a bunch in my garden, and the plants few to be much better. The plants are compact, but they had beautiful large leaves and the pods were quite large for a small plant, with 4-5 peas per pod! Will definitely order more next year!