Cyril, I can sympathize with you on getting peas to grow. My sweet peas sure had a rough life this year and they are on the way out. What I've had the most trouble with this year is blackeye peas (cowpeas/southern peas). I bought two packets of seeds and planted them early. Of the first planting, only one plant came up in around 160' of planted rows. So I go to the feed store and buy bulk seeds. After re-planting, I had a sprouting of maybe 1/3 of the seeds; pretty sparse. So, when I came home from vacation, I went to Walmart and bought a 1 lb bag of dry blackeye peas. I filled in between the growing plants with hand planted seeds from the grocery and within three days every pea I planted is sprouting. It's amazing! This makes three times that I've had tremendous luck with bags of grocery store beans and peas when the seed varieties failed.
I think there are a lot of old/bad seeds floating around on the market. That's also true for yard grass seed. I started to buy a 50 lb bag of grass seed for my lawn this year and discovered that the seed inside were from 2007 when I read the label. It said that in several states the seed could not even be sold past October of 2008. Too bad Texas doesn't have a similar law. After two years old, I'd bet at least 1/2 the seed won't germinate under perfect conditions.
