Peas, garden

The garden or English pea gets the most attention in Jefferson’s correspondence and weather records. Other early season produce items like asparagus and strawberries also feature prominently, perhaps because of the great anticipation of their arrival in the kitchen. Peas, though, not being a perennial, could “come to table” at different times depending on their sower’s inclination to risk planting while the possibility of frost remained.

Jefferson grew many types of pea. In 1794 Robert Bailey recorded saving the seeds from Early Dwarf, Early Charlton, Hotspur, Marrowfat, pearl-eyed, black-eyed, white-eyed, small green, and Indian peas. The first three are European peas (Pisum sativum and its variants), known as English or garden peas. It is this pea that is mentioned most in Jefferson’s weather records. Jefferson recommended seeding them as early as February with successive plantings through May. These favorite vegetables were “the cheapest, pleasantest, & most wholesome part of comfortable living,” and he issued several invitations to pea dinners at Monticello. His grandchildren told of a friendly neighborhood contest in which the first to have garden peas come to table would invite his neighbors to dine on them. Jefferson’s correspondence with George Divers, owner of Farmington west of Charlottesville, gives evidence of the friendly rivalry between the two with Divers most often issuing the first invitation. European field peas could also be eaten fresh, but were mostly left to dry on the vine. 

Jefferson also experimented with varieties of “field” peas in his garden. The term field pea could refer to a European pea like the Marrowfat, which is starchy and typically dried before use in soups and porridges, or to other varieties of legumes brought to North American by enslaved people from Africa, Vigna unguiculata. Commonly called the cowpea or Indian pea, these legumes can be eaten straight from the garden when young, typically in a mush, or harvested once dried in the pods. Varieties including the black-eyed and crowder pea appear in traditional dishes of the American South. Jefferson did not differentiate in his chart of availability of vegetables at Washington, indicating that peas in general were available from 9 May to 17 November. Succession planting could provide the market with tender garden peas throughout the spring and fall, but the peas available in the summer would be starchier, heat-tolerant varieties or field peas.

References

Edwin Morris Betts, ed., Thomas Jefferson’s Garden Book, 1766–1824 (Philadelphia, 1944).

“Peas” in Andrew F. Smith, The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America (Oxford, Eng., 2004).

Jefferson, “A General Gardening Calendar,” Baltimore American Farmer, 21 May 1824, 72.

Memorandum from Robert Bailey, [January 1795].

Jefferson to Elizabeth Trist, 10 May 1813.

Jefferson to Bernard Peyton, 8 May 1814.

George Divers to Jefferson, 30 April 1815.

Jefferson to Elizabeth Trist, 1 June 1815.

Jefferson to Peter Minor, 22 May 1816.

Jefferson to Craven Peyton, 23 May 1817.

George Divers to Jefferson, 6 May 1819.