Maintaining Pea Seed Quality
Your harvest operations and weather during harvest can affect seed quality which is important for marketing peas. A few grading factors to keep in mind this harvest are:
- Crack seed coats and splits: These occur when seed is too dry and/or cylinder or rotor speeds are too high. Harvesting at 18-20% seed moisture and slowing cylinder speed with drier grain can reduce seed damage. Run combine and grain cart augers at low speeds and at full capacity.
- Shrivelled seed: Seed appears dimpled and shrunken, due to plant senescence while seed was immature. Carefully timed swathing or desiccation will avoid this issue.
- Earth tag: A greater issue in peas than in other crops due to the nature of harvest and the texture of the seed coat (which retains dirt). If you are finding earth tag on the seed, check for soil sticking to the flighting on your combine augers. Reduce earth tag by minimizing green or dewy plant material passing through the combine and if necessary, lift the cutting bar.
- Pink peas: Hail can damage pods and allow the bacteria Erwinia Rhapontici to enter and stain peas pink.
- Spoilage: As the peas enter the bin, measure the grain temperature and moisture. If the initial temperature and moisture are within the “no spoilage” zone of Figure 3, grain can be safely stored for up to five months. A general recommendation is to use aeration fans to cool and dry the crop to at least 16% moisture and 15°C.
Dealing with Lodging
Both straight-cutting and windrowing are viable options for harvesting peas, which lodge with increasing severity with wet weather and taller crop canopy height. Varieties of most common market classes (e.g. yellow) are semi-leafless, meaning the leaflets have been replaced by tendrils. These tendrils knit together, improving standability. Newer yellow pea varieties, such as Hickie, Lewochko, and Tollefson are rated as Very Good for lodging resistance over other varieties that are rated as Good for lodging resistance such as Carver (the check variety), Chrome (the most popular by acres in 2024), Julius, Profit and Citrine.
Use of a foliar fungicide and recommended seeding rates may also decrease lodging.
If direct harvesting, flex headers are typically used to run as close to the ground as possible. Rigid headers can also successfully be used and may be preferred if stones are prevalent in the field. Even if no stones are present, land rolling is a must to reduce earth tag when straight-cutting. Vine lifters and pick up reels aid in harvesting lodged crops by lifting the canopy up over the cutting bar. Vine lifters have been found to reduce harvest losses from 5% to 1.5% of crop yield, decrease plugging and allow for faster harvest speeds (PAMI, 1990). Lifters spaced at 9-12 inches intervals were found to work best.
Swathing can be used if the crop has begun to lodge earlier during the dry down phase. Swathing also facilitates a pick-up header and avoids the risk of picking up stones or earth. Swaths can be quite billowy immediately after swathing and susceptible to wind (pod shatter and movement) so harvest should be timed as quickly as possible after dry down.