[celeriac]

I got some asparagus peas free with a magazine so I sowed them in pots indoors and then a few months ago planted them out into my peas and beans bed. To my delight in the last few weeks they've exploded with growth and colour and now have plenty of pods covering them, a few of which I picked last week.

The only problem is they're inedible, and I don't mean they're not to my taste I mean I cannot eat a whole one as some chemical in them does something revolting to my mouth that is so revolting I have to spit them out, the same happens to my wife. The taste is not on the outside but throughout the pod and they've been grown on a patch that has not been sprayed which had perfectly pleasant (normal) peas growing on it in the spring.

What could have caused this? Has anyone else had inedible asparagus peas?

[Kleftiwallah]

Good morning celeriac,
 I grew these quite a few years ago and if I remember correctly I found them edible (although I haven't grown them since).

Cheers,  Tony.

[mumofstig]

I don't like the taste, at all -  and the effects of the weather may have made them worse than normal.
I shouldn't worry about it, just now you know not to grow them again.....

[JayG]

Grew them once (pretty flowers, pods edible but didn't taste of much, least of all asparagus.)

As mum says, the recent weather won't have helped - not many UK crops are improved by the conditions many of us have experienced recently.

[Growster...]

They also need to be picked when very young, and while the flowers are lovely, the crop is not really worth the space IMHO!

We weren't all that keen on the 'taste' either...

[Nobbie]

I had a similar experience with some perpetual spinach, they were just starting to go to seed and I took a small leaf and popped it in my mouth. Got an almost burning sensation caused by a buildup of some sort of acid in the leaf. Maybe the warm weather has caused something similar in the peas?

[Aunt Sally]

I don’t know anyone who likes them. 


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQgIiJ0wUgI

[Growster...]

Love it Auntie!

They're unappetising, stringy, tasteless, space-wasting, probably indigestible too (I made that last bit up)...

Just grow sugar snap peas and actually enjoy noshing something, rather than chew for ages on a lump of a remaindered 1920s library book.