What's Eating My Peas?
Cool-season peas mostly race ahead of trouble, but a few specialists know the schedule and meet them at the gate.
The usual suspects
Pea aphids
The signs: Curled tips, stunted vines, sticky honeydew, and clusters at the growing points.
What it looks like: Comparatively large, long-legged green aphids.
What to do: Two or three hard water blasts a week apart usually reset the balance; soap-spray persistent colonies.
Pea leaf weevil
The signs: Neat, scalloped U-shaped notches all along leaf edges — like someone worked the margins with a hole punch.
What it looks like: Small gray-brown weevil feeding at night; larvae work unseen on the root nodules.
What to do: Vigorous stands outgrow notching; sow early into warm soil and keep seedlings growing fast. Damage is mostly cosmetic on healthy plants.
Birds
The signs: Seedlings tugged clean out of the row, sometimes left lying; shoots nipped to the ground.
What it looks like: Pigeons and crows work rows systematically at emergence.
What to do: Netting or wire hoops over the row until plants are several inches tall.
Slugs
The signs: Ragged seedling damage and slime in cool damp spring weather.
What it looks like: Under-board hiders, night feeders.
What to do: Traps and iron phosphate at sowing time.
Rabbits
The signs: Vines clipped at clean angles, low on the plant, faster than any bug.
What it looks like: Neat 45-degree cuts and pellet calling cards.
What to do: Two-foot chicken wire, bottom flared outward and pinned.
When it's not a pest at all
White powdery coating late in the season is powdery mildew — routine as vines finish. Yellowing from the base up in wet soil is root rot; peas hate wet feet.
Or just point your phone at it
Snap a photo of the leaf, the bug, or the droppings, and Harold — the advisor built into Homestead Paradise — names what he sees, tells you friend or foe, and what he'd do next. Honest when he's unsure, and careful where it counts.
Put Harold's Eyes on it — free 14-day trial