Mange Tout Sugar Dwarf Sweet Green
Mange Tout peas are simple to grow and super tasty. This variety's the easiest of all because it only grows to about 2ft tall, unlike a conventional pea which can reach a towering 8ft tall.
Mice nicking freshly sown peas is the only real problem you need to deal with, and you can get around this by sowing in gutters.
Time from seed to plate: 10 weeks
Sowing Calendar
Sow
Peas are surprisingly robust plants, so they can be sown early - anytime from March till June is ideal. They're perfectly fine outside.
Gutters are the best method I've found because it gets around the mouse issue. You need one gutter per row. Sow the peas in a zig zag pattern with about 2in between each one. Push them about 1/2in into the compost and water well. Then fox those pesky mice by positioning the gutters somewhere inaccessible like a window ledge.
Sowing method: Gutters
Grow
Transfer your pea plants to your plot when they're around 3in tall. Make sure the soil has plenty of compost/manure dug in.
Water the gutter so the compost is nice and clingy then slide out the pea plants in sections into a shallow groove. Your peas want to be at the same spacing in the soil as they were in the gutter. Leave 12in between each row of plants.
It's useful to give your peas something to climb over, although by no means essential. Left to their own devices they'll just clamber over one another. If you want to use supports - which will make the peas slightly easier to pick - push in some twiggy branches that are a couple of feet tall around your seedlings, or use some bamboo canes with linked together with string.
Keep weed free and moist. Peas have very few problems with pests.
Harvest
Once your plants start producing, pick twice a week if you can to encourage more pods. Always use two hands to pick to avoid damaging the stem, and pick as close to eating as possible for best flavour.
Once they stop producing, cut the plant down, but leave the roots in the soil. They produce nitrogen and fix it in the soil to benefit your next crop.