Peas, Peas, Pretty Peas

June 14th photo

Labyrinth Location: Inner yin-dot arc, 6 to 9 o'clock
Vegetable: Peas
Seed/Transplant Date: May 21 (?), and June 7
Soil Preparation: Same as the Yin Dot.

When I started this blog, just three days ago, I walked through the garden and photographed every bed. I'm amazed already at the change that's noticeable between those June 14th photos and today.


Garth made sure we got these planted as early as possible - well, actually, as early as he could persuade me to interrupt my digging for some planting, which wasn't early at all. (Deb in Minnesota has peas flowering already!) I gave them a prime spot in the new part of the garden, hand dug with the sod swapped out with existing garden soil. Not that I wanted to favour them - in hindsight, I might have found a way to put parsnips and carrots in this nice deep soil - but I wanted to keep the legumes away from where I'd grown them before, to see if the germination would be better.

It was, but only marginally. I had new seed, too, whereas last year I had planted three-year-old seed of very uncertain quality, stuff that Garth had collected from our own garden when the crop got ahead of us and dried on the vines. Maybe I shouldn't be soaking the peas before planting? The seed envelope suggests using a fungicide if spotty germination has been a problem, but I'm wondering if there are other things I could try instead.

The snow peas I planted were old seed, and didn't grow at all. I got some more seed of the regular (Lincoln Homesteader) peas, and replanted the snow pea bed plus the gaps in the regular peas. They're just coming up today. That should extend the harvest a little.