7 Best Field Pea Varieties For Cool Climates That Thrive in Short Seasons

When you’re staring down a short growing season, every planting decision feels critical. A late frost in spring or an early one in fall can shrink your window for success to just a few precious months. This is especially true for staple crops like field peas, where a failed harvest means a real gap in your winter pantry or feed supply. Choosing the right variety isn’t just about preference; it’s about matching a plant’s genetics to the reality of your climate.

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Alaska Peas: The Ultra-Early Season Starter

If you want the first peas in your neighborhood, Alaska is your variety. It’s famous for one thing: speed. Maturing in as little as 55 days, it allows you to get a crop planted, harvested, and out of the ground before many other varieties have even set flowers. This makes it perfect for succession planting, letting you follow it with a crop of buckwheat or fall greens.

Don’t plant Alaska peas expecting the sugary sweetness of a classic garden pea. These are smooth, starchy, and built for function. Think of them as a utility crop. They excel in soups and stews where they break down and add body, or as an early-season, high-protein supplement for poultry.

The tradeoff is clear: you sacrifice table quality for incredible earliness and cold tolerance. For a hobby farmer trying to maximize every square foot over a short season, getting a reliable food and feed crop harvested by early summer is a massive strategic win. It frees up valuable garden space and puts food on the shelf while other crops are just getting started.

Trapper: A Hardy Semi-Leafless Drying Pea

Trapper is a workhorse variety designed for self-sufficiency. Its most important trait is its semi-leafless growth habit. Instead of broad leaves, the plant produces an abundance of tendrils that grab onto neighboring plants, creating a self-supporting tangle that stays upright. This is a game-changer in cool, damp climates.

Better airflow through the canopy drastically reduces the risk of powdery mildew and other fungal diseases that thrive in still, humid conditions. It also makes harvesting a breeze. The pods are more exposed, and you don’t have to fight a jungle of wet leaves to find them. The plants stand tall, preventing pods from rotting on wet soil.

As a drying pea, Trapper is exceptional. The peas have a low moisture content and dry down uniformly on the vine, making them perfect for long-term storage. They are a fantastic source of protein for winter soups, stews, or for grinding into flour. This isn’t a pea for fresh eating; it’s a pea for filling jars and ensuring you have a reliable food source deep into winter.

Arvika Forage Peas: For Soil Health & Feed

Some crops aren’t grown for the kitchen, but for the health of the farm itself. Arvika is one of those crops. This is a forage pea, bred for massive biomass production and incredible nitrogen fixation. If your goal is to build soil fertility or produce high-quality animal feed, Arvika is a top-tier choice.

Planted as a cover crop, Arvika grows with astonishing speed, creating a thick, weed-suppressing mat. Its roots work with soil bacteria to pull atmospheric nitrogen and store it in the ground, providing a powerful, free source of fertilizer for the cash crop that follows. You can either till the entire plant into the soil as a "green manure" or use a chop-and-drop method in a no-till system.

For the hobby farmer with livestock, Arvika is a protein factory. It can be mixed with oats or barley to create a perfectly balanced forage for chickens, pigs, or goats. The high protein content makes it an excellent feed for growing animals. Think of it not as a single crop, but as a tool for reducing your feed bill and improving your soil’s resilience year after year.

Green Arrow: High Yields & Disease Resistance

When you want heavy yields of classic, sweet shelling peas for fresh eating or freezing, Green Arrow is a fantastic choice. While technically a garden pea, its vigor and resilience make it perform like a field pea in cool-climate homesteads. It consistently produces long pods, often packed with 8 to 11 peas each.

Its real strength lies in its built-in disease resistance. Green Arrow is known for its tolerance to common pea problems like Fusarium wilt and powdery mildew. This is a huge advantage for small-scale growers who want to avoid chemical sprays. A plant that can fight off its own battles is a plant that gives you a more reliable harvest with less work.

The vines are vigorous and will require some support, but the payoff is immense. A relatively small patch of Green Arrow can yield enough peas to fill your freezer for the winter. It hits the sweet spot between the robust nature of a field pea and the delicious flavor of a garden variety, making it a dependable choice for your primary food crop.

Lincoln: A Reliable Cool-Weather Heirloom

Lincoln is a classic for a reason. This heirloom variety has been trusted by gardeners for decades, especially in northern regions. It is exceptionally well-suited to climates where summer temperatures remain mild, as it continues producing high-quality, sweet peas without faltering in the cool weather that can stunt other varieties.

As an heirloom, Lincoln offers a key advantage: you can save your own seed. This is a cornerstone of self-sufficiency, allowing you to adapt the variety to your specific microclimate over time and eliminating the need to buy new seeds each year. The flavor is fantastic—genuinely sweet and tender, perfect for eating straight from the pod.

The main consideration with Lincoln is its growth habit. It’s a true vining pea and absolutely requires sturdy trellising to keep the plants off the ground. Without support, you’ll face a tangled mess that is difficult to harvest and prone to disease. For those willing to provide the structure, Lincoln rewards the effort with exceptional flavor and proven reliability.

Maestro: Productive Pods on a Compact Vine

Maestro offers a fantastic balance of productivity and manageability. It’s a shelling pea that produces yields comparable to larger varieties like Green Arrow but on a much more compact, 2-foot vine. This makes it an excellent choice for smaller gardens, raised beds, or intensive planting schemes where every inch of space counts.

Like Green Arrow, Maestro boasts a strong disease-resistance package, giving you peace of mind against common ailments. The pods are easy to shell and filled with sweet, flavorful peas. It’s an improved version of older varieties, bred for higher performance without demanding more space or resources.

Think of Maestro as the efficient option. It doesn’t require the tall, heavy-duty trellising of a variety like Lincoln, often getting by with a short fence or pea netting. For the busy hobby farmer, this means less time spent on infrastructure and more time focused on harvesting a reliable, delicious crop.

Novella II: Easy Harvesting & Air Circulation

Novella II is another semi-leafless variety, but it’s primarily grown as a shelling pea for fresh eating. Its unique structure makes it one of the most efficient and enjoyable peas to harvest. The plant concentrates its pod production at the very top of the vine, holding them well above the bulk of the foliage.

This growth habit solves two common problems. First, harvesting is incredibly fast because you aren’t hunting for pods hidden deep within a dense canopy. Second, the open structure promotes excellent air circulation, which is critical for preventing rot and mildew in the damp, cool weather common in short-season climates.

This variety is a testament to smart plant breeding. It’s a system that nearly guarantees a cleaner, healthier crop with less effort. While the vines are self-supporting, providing a short fence can help keep the patch tidy and even easier to pick. If you value efficiency and a clean harvest, Novella II is an outstanding choice.

Choosing Your Pea: Yield vs. End-Use Goals

There is no single "best" pea. The right choice depends entirely on your goal. Before you buy a single seed, you need to answer one question: "What do I want these peas to do for my farm?"

Your decision-making should be guided by your primary objective:

• For the earliest possible food: Alaska is the undisputed winner, but you’ll trade sweetness for speed.
• For winter food security: A drying pea like Trapper is your best bet. Its storage potential and self-supporting growth make it a low-input staple.
• For building soil fertility: Arvika is the clear choice. It’s a farm tool disguised as a plant, designed to feed your soil and livestock.
• For freezing and fresh eating: Green Arrow and Maestro offer high yields of sweet peas with excellent disease resistance. Choose Maestro if space is tight.
• For easy harvesting: The semi-leafless habit of Novella II puts it in a class of its own for efficiency and plant health.

Don’t get caught up in finding a variety that does everything. Instead, consider planting two or three different types to meet different needs. A small patch of Alaska for early eating, a main crop of Green Arrow for the freezer, and a block of Arvika to rejuvenate the soil for next year’s potatoes is a smart, diversified strategy for any small farm.

Ultimately, success in a short season comes from strategic selection. By matching the right pea variety to your specific goals—whether it’s feeding your family, your soil, or your animals—you turn a climatic challenge into a productive opportunity. Choose wisely, and you’ll be rewarded with a harvest that works as hard as you do.