Little Marvel Peas seeds for the kitchen garden that intends to actually produce little marvel peas this year. Little Marvel has been a garden standard since 1900, which is a longer career than most plants can claim.

Little Marvel Peas is a compact, heavy-yielding pea variety that lives up to its name with very little encouragement. Each packet is hermetically vacuum-sealed -- removing the oxygen that causes standard paper seed packets to lose germination viability within approximately one year. State law requires a 3-year viability label on sealed packaging. NASA research on hermetic seed storage indicates viability of up to 10 years under proper conditions. Every packet is non-GMO and germination-tested at independent third-party labs before it earns its Japanese woodblock print artwork.

How to Grow Little Marvel Peas from Seed

Sowing and Germination

Direct sow as soon as soil workable in spring. 3cm deep, 8cm apart. Cool season crop.

Care and Harvest

Dwarf variety, needs minimal support. Heavy crop of sweet, plump peas. 63 days.

Why Vacuum-Sealed Seeds Last Longer

Standard paper seed packets are permeable to oxygen and moisture -- the two primary causes of seed degradation. Most paper-packaged seeds begin losing germination viability after approximately one year, contributing to significant garden-industry waste: packets purchased, not planted, expired, discarded. Shido Seeds are hermetically vacuum-sealed. The packet does not expire quietly in a drawer. It waits.

About the Packaging

Every Shido seed packet is illustrated in the style of Japanese 1910s woodblock printing -- designed and drawn in-house by Chive, the Toronto ceramics studio that has been exhibiting at the Chelsea Flower Show in London every year and does not, as a matter of principle, sell to big-box retailers. Customers collect the packets as a series. This was not the original plan.