The peas finally went in the ground tonight. According to tradition, peas are to be planted on Good Friday, which is a tradition that is perhaps best not followed literally. Figuratively at least, peas tolerate if not adore a cool soil and growing condition so they grow best in spring and again in fall. I am still not exactly a convert to fresh peas but the lady next door who lets us use her garden LOVES peas so we planted a nice long row of them for her. She figures that she might be able to be eating peas in mid July.
Part of the reason why we’re so late, in fact, is because our neighbor hired some clever and industrious young men to build a short flagstone wall around the pea garden, and by short I mean no more than 8 inches tall! A trellis divides this bed. We planted the peas on the shady northern side of the trellis while we’re reserving the sunny southern side for tomatoes and basil which performed marvelously there last year. We wish we’d snapped photos of the progress on the wall from foundation to gravel to sand and every course in case we ever wanted to build such a structure, but hindsight is quite clear, isn’t it?
Our neighbor provided the seed this year, a huge packet of Dark Seeded Early Perfection from Burpee. The package claims they are “drought resistant, prolific and early.” I reserved half the seed for a late summer crop… if I don’t forget again. I soaked the ones going into the ground for awhile to soften the shell and prepare them for germination, then I drained off the water and rolled the seed in a bit of rhizobial bacteria. I’ve blathered about this wondrous symbiosis before but the bacteria actually helps legumes like these peas enrich the soil. Together, they are able to “fix” atmospheric nitrogen into soluble nitrogen, the kind that helps make plant foliage green. For this reason alone, I’m glad to grow beans and peas.
For pea bramble – the scaffold that the peas climb up – we used bits of the lilac branch that snapped off during the late snow fall. It’s not ideal but yada yada Mother of Invention and all.
The whole task took honestly about 20 minutes, a fair day’s effort.
