Growing Peas Indoors: From Seed to Harvest in Your Home

Learn how to grow peas indoors at home. Using basic supplies, sow favorite varieties from sugar to snap peas. Enjoy the vines and flowers and harvest delicious shoots and peas any time of year.

Along with peas, these indoor vegetable gardening tips shows you how to grow many different veggies and herbs in the same space.

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Growing Peas Indoors

Overview

The process for growing peas indoors is just like other plants you start from seed.

• Pea seeds are planted in pots of organic potting mix, placed under grow lights, and watered as needed.
• As the plants grow, you may want to add trellis.
• Pea plants can be harvested any time for their tender shoots. If your plants flower, you may also get peas in pods.

This was a delicious surprise: you can grow peas indoors at home.

Many garden guides list seeds that can be started indoors versus others that are better off sown directly in the ground. And peas are always on the direct sow outdoors list. This is because they do fine in cold conditions and do not like being transplanted.

So, it never really occurred to me to try starting them indoors (let alone growing them to maturity) until some years ago when I did a bunch of seed starting experiments.

Well, that winter ended up being extra long and spring was too rainy and cold to transplant anything outdoors as I normally would.

So, instead those peas continued to grow indoors without me providing any special care.

I kept everything watered but hadn’t really noticed that the pea shoots had became vines, climbing up the back of the grow-light shelves.

And—best of all—they flowered and produced pea pods.

What?

That was one of the coolest discoveries I’ve had in my years of indoor seed starting.

And that’s when I realized I could grow entire crops indoors, harvesting pea shoots (tender, delicious) along the way, and allow others to mature and provide edible pods.

This lists more fast-growing vegetables to grow indoors.

While it would take quite a lot of plants to produce a substantial harvest, I think just having them as flowering houseplants for several months makes it worthwhile. That fact that some food will follow is a total bonus.

Contents

• How to Grow Peas Indoors
  • Supplies
  • Growing Conditions
  • Care
  • Harvest
  • Sow More
• Resources

How To Grow Peas Indoors

Supplies

To get started you will need:

• Pea seeds (see suggestions, above)
• Potting mix for organic vegetables
• Pots (4 to 6 inches wide and deep) or larger if you have room
• Fluorescent lights (T5 or T8 bulbs) or LED lights
• General seed starting supplies: see everything I use

Tips

If you are new to growing from seed, I have a complete guide here: Seed Starting for Beginners.

My favourite supplies for indoor seed starting are shown here.

Use organic growing medium (potting mix) suitable for vegetables.

If you have room, sow directly into 4 to 6 inch pots (or larger) so you won’t need to transplant to larger pots later on.

You could also use window boxes (with drainage holes) and sow many peas in each container.

Sow the peas at depth recommended on the seed package (usually one-half to one inch deep).

I put just one seed in each pot. You can also sow more and thin out later, leaving the best one.

After sowing, water thoroughly and top up potting mix if needed.

I’ve tried growing many different varieties of peas indoors over the years and all of them provided pea shoots and often peas as well.

Use whatever variety you want and keep track of how they grow. We each have different indoor growing climates so results will vary.

Growing Conditions

The temperature in our house is between 65 to 70°F (18 to 21°C) with humidity around 50% and seems to suit the peas just fine.

Keep the grow lights on at least 8-10 hours a day with the lights just a few inches above the plants. Some say they need quite a bit more (12-16 hours a day) but I have not found this necessary. Start on the low end and increase if needed. Natural light from windows will also contribute to overall light.

You can see my grow light setup here including details on exactly which bulbs I like to use.

Alternately you can grow them near a window receiving 8 hours of full sun per day. I find they do better with lights but a good southern facing window (northern hemisphere) could certainly work. Just don’t let them get too warm.

Check on your peas daily and water as needed.

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Care

Trellis

Provide trellis or supports as the vines grow.

I’ve done this with and without supports. Without supports the plant flops over but still produces pods.

My favorite trellis is individual pieces of grid wire storage shelves which I hang from my grow light shelving unit.

I like using trellis to provide better air flow and make it easy to reach all parts of the plants.

I use twist ties or twine to tie the pea vines to the trellis as they grow.

Water

Check the potting mix daily and ensure it stays moderately moist—not too wet or dry.

Fertilizer

I’m honestly not sure if you will or will not need fertilizer. I’ve grown peas indoors over several winters and never found a need for it.

If you do need some, I would use a basic liquid fish and/or seaweed fertilizer and follow the instructions on the bottle. Either do full, occasional doses or more frequent smaller ones.

Harvest

Pea Shoots & Pods

As your peas grow, the plant will flower and eventually produce peas in pods. Peas are a crop that can complete pollination on their own without help from pollinators or wind because of the way the flowers are structured. But just to be sure, check your seed packet in case you’ve got a hybrid that has unique needs.

As the plants grow, you can harvest some of the pea shoots for salads and pick the pods when they are ready. Pea pods and the peas inside are edible at any time but you can hold off until the peas are full size too.

The lifespan of the plants is typically several months long.

Sow More

The benefit of indoor vegetable gardening—especially when you use artificial lights—is you are not governed by the weather.

You can sow peas every couple of weeks to have a continuous harvest ongoing.

Pea flowers are beautiful all on their own!

Resources

I hope you will give indoor food growing a try.

~Melissa the Empress of Dirt ♛

https://empressofdirt.net/grow-vegetables-indoors