why did my sugar snap peas turn brown?

I planted sugar snap peas last year for the first time and they did all right for awhile but mid summer they turned brown and had dark spots on them . any idea what was wrong I dont know if I didn,t water enough, or to much sun , maybe to much water , but I planted them again this year and I,d like to get it right this time can anyone help me figure out what I did wrong?

My peas was doing great, until one day I had some compost tea that I wanted to get rid of so I dumped the whole bucket into my peas. The next day, half of the peas turned brown & died. I thought I had killed them. The other half is still green & fine.

By the way, how much peas does one have to plant inorder to get a can of peas? I only pick about l0 a week.

Even in Indiana, English peas probably succumbed to midsummer (July August )heat. Here they are toast by June.

Farmerdill , thanks I feel better knowing that I am not whats killing them. I have a question for you, is there a difference in what brand of seeds you buy? I have seen a lot of bargain seed packets but wonder if I would end up dissapointed in the way the produced.

The cultivar (variety) is very important. Vendor is not with some exceptions. But that usually deals with service not quality of seeds. The government requires a germination test each year before sale. The bargain seed packs like American seeds usually contain popular open polinated cultivars which were overproduced in a given year. They are sort of the Big Lots of seed vendors.

Farmerdill thanks for the info I was wondering if I buy seeds this year will they be ok to plant next year or does the older the seed is effect how well it will germinate?

Age does affect germination. most seeds are good for several years tho.

Farmerdill, what variety do you recommend?

I am not really into snap peas, but the best cultivar that I have tried is the old Sugar Snap. There is a new Super Sugar Snap but I have not tried it. These are tall peas, there are some dwarf varieties. I have grown Sugar Rae, Sugar Ann, and Sugar Bon, which are dwarfs but did not like them as well as the Sugar Snap

Farmerdill I was wondering is it ok to grow your plants like beans ,corn and potatoes in the same spot in your garden every year, or should you change where you plant them every growing season, the reason I ask is i notice our local farmers grow corn only every other year in the same field they switch off and grow soybeans instead of corn . I was wondering if that is a practice the home gardener should do ?

If your garden is sufficiently large it is a good idea. Crops like corn, cabbage are heavy feeders especially nitrogen. It is good practice to rotate them with legumes which add nitrogen to the soil. The other factor is disease and insect build up. Hard to avoid in a small garden, but much easier when you can rotate fields. Rotation in this case means planting crops that are not subject to the same diseases or vulnerable to the same insects.

Farmerdill, thanks for the info my neighbor told me not to till every year he said something about it being hard on the soil . I was going to run a tiller between my rows to keep weeds down but now am not sure can you over till?

I am a traditional grower, I plow and cultivate and let the young folks try all the newfangled ideas. My techniques date to horse and buggy days. I no longer work with horse drawn equipment but I have. The only problem with tillage is that clay soils when worked with something like a rear tine tiller will be broken into very fine particles. A heavy rain and it will form bricks. Incorporate lots of plant matter and you alleviate the problem, The only thing that comes out of my patches are eaten or given away. all the rest of the plants are ploughed back into the soil.

farmerdill thanks again , that tractor in the picture is a wonderful part of history , my son is 13 and loves the old tractors especialy farmal and internationals the older the better for him we go to shows and his best friend is an old gentlmen and his son who collects and restores them . my son likes them unrestored and still in use. he saw your picture and asked me to print it out . can you give him some info on it and maybe a little history of it if you have time?

It is a 1956 Farmall 100, bought new by the owner of the land I am working. He used it until suffering a severe stroke about a decade ago. I work his land and fill his freezer. He has lost his mobility, but still sharp as a tack at 87. These small one row cultivating tractors are still perfect for small growers.

Thats great that he still has his wits about him. I love to see the old equipment still in use . I remember a time when there were a lot more small farmers but around here it seems like the big farms have kind of swallowed up the smaller farms. we see mostly big newer equipment they just dont have the charm of the old machines.