pretty snap peas

I keep getting more snap peas! The first crop was great and I never expected the plants to flower again and keep producing peas. My green shell peas stopped flowering several weeks ago and I pulled them, but these snap peas keep going strong.

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pea sprouts!

These are sugar snap peas planted on April 9th. It took them 2 weeks to sprout. I now have garlic, parsley, lettuce and peas growing!


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pretty peas

I harvested a little crop of green peas and made a few nice servings for my summer guests. This is probably all I will get from my back row of pisello nano peas. It is a short variety. (I thought they would be tall and produce more - but they only climbed 1 foot up my 4 foot trellis.) Though I'm complaining a little, I've actually I've never had such a good pea crop, so I'm very pleased.

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pea blossom

This is a sugar snap pea. Both my Pisello nano peas and sugar snaps have many flowers all of a sudden today. Though the Capucijner peas are 4 feet tall now, they aren't blooming yet. The peas that are blooming are only 1-2 feet tall.

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pea trellis (on a windy wednesday)

I like to get the pea trellis up before the peas sprout. This year I made a zig-zag trellis from poles and sticks and tie-wrapped a white plastic net to it. It seems a bit wobbly and I may need to reinforce it with more poles later.

The pea trellis is in the sunny part of my garden, right up against the house and under the windows where my seedlings are growing.

(As an aside, the trellis assembly was a bit of a struggle. I thought for a while that the net was going to win. For some reason, I decided to assemble the trellis during a wind advisory, which is issued in the US with sustained winds 31-39 mph for at least 1 hour. Also, we had a steady drizzle and I was working fast trying to beat the more serious rain. AND, I wore clips in my hair that had an annoying way of catching on the netting. (It must have looked funny to my neighbors...) There may be easier ways to work with this netting - maybe cutting the netting and assembling the trellis flat on the ground and then putting it up. Maybe just avoiding high winds. It would help to have some prior experience with tie-wraps so you already know that only one direction works. The netting came with a warning to assemble it taut, so birds don't get caught in it. The net comes folded up into a neat little square. I think in the end, I unfolded it, tie-wrapped and trimmed it so it looks good. I think its taut enough so the birds should be OK.)

I picked up an old pallet from the Free Stuff pile at my local True Value hardware store. I made the paths from the boards. (That way I don't compress the soil by walking on it.)

I think I'll plant the trellis half with Capucijner peas and half with Tall Telephone peas. Both are 6 ft vines. I'll underplant with Sugar Sprint snap peas (about 2 feet tall) and Pisello Nano peas (only 1 foot). Recommended companions for peas are daisies and cosmos, so I'll mix these in too.

I've already planted a couple of the zigs of the trellis with peas. Once these sprout, I'll plant more zigs (or zags). When they sprout, I'll do another sowing, etc. This succession sowing should extend the harvest. Not so important for the sugar snaps, which had an incredibly extended season last year, or for the Capucijner soup peas, which I'll dry and collect for winter anyway, but a good idea for my green shell peas.

To the front of the path (between the boards and the stone walkway), will be brassicas (kale and broccoli). These will be covered with a white, light weight row cover May to Sept because of cabbage worms.

Right now I have a small plot of fava beans planted in front of the plastic bottles. I had hoped to grow the favas at my new Community Plot this year, but I will not get an assignment until April 12. I'll try a second seeding there I hope.

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the seeds arrived!

OOoopps! I worried too soon. In today's mail my seeds arrived! That made my day. I opened the blue pod Capucijner peas to see what they look like. They are an interesting range of colors. My package labeled 15 seeds had 32 seeds. Good deal.

Opening the seed order was wonderful because I ordered some dukat dill and the seeds are very aromatic. My dining room smells like fresh dill now. I like to scatter some dill plants around the garden for the same reason - they smell so nice. Plus they reseed as little volunteers throughout the garden for several years afterwards - and the swallowtail caterpillars love it.

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A nice surprise: Sand Hill included a free package of black-seeded simpson lettuce for trial. Nice. I can always use some extra lettuce.

OK. I'm really for planting now. Only problem is my garden is still a little frozen. I will try again tomorrow. Maybe I can break up the frost layer with the big shovel.

spring planting!

Its my official start of a new gardening season! Today I planted my first seeds: one 3 ft row of each snap peas, Capucijner peas, endive, escarole, a lettuce mix, and black seeded simpson lettuce. I coated the pea seeds with inoculant just before planting.

I have changed my side-bar count-down meter to keep track of the time until tomato harvest. Last year my first tomato was ripe on July 31. Around here, July 4 is the date gardeners shoot for. I've never even come close, but I thought I'd challenge myself and aim for two weeks earlier than last year: July 17 is my target date for a big red tomato. Yummmmm!

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Lactuca sativa

fall peas

My fall crop of peas is a couple feet tall now. I planted them on August 11. The variety is Alderan (Tall Telephone).

Here's the description form Sandhill Preservation Center, where I got these heirloom seeds: "Alderman (Tall Telephone): 75 days. I remember how much I enjoyed growing this variety in the cooler Springs in the Northwest. There it would reach 6 feet tall and be loaded with pods. Our rapidly changing climate here makes them shorter."

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pea rootlet

I checked on my peas that I planted outside two weeks ago (March 18). They have been growing - little roots have started! We have warm wet weather coming up, so I'll watch for sprouts.

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capucijner peas

I'm enjoying watching this beautiful pea in my garden. The Capucijner pea is a field pea, a variety specifically grown for drying. Here's some information I found about them: "During the late Middle Ages, Capuchin monks in Holland and northern Germany devoted considerable energy to the improvement of field peas for agricultural purposes. This has resulted in a group of large-seeded gray peas referred to as Capuchin, especially those from the Netherlands where the breeding of new pea varieties became a national pastime by the early 1600s. One of the classic peas from this group and one which dates from the 1500s is the handsome blue pod Capucijner, a soup pea growing on six-foot (two m) vines." (source) My dad can pronounce the Dutch name just fine, but I wouldn't even dare to try.

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picking Capucijner peas

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Capucijner peas

My Capucijner soup pea crop amounted to 2 cups this year - twice what I got last year. Its drying now in a bowl in my kitchen. I stir them often and remove the few peas that get moldy. Peas and beans for drying are usually left on the vine until they're dry, but it was much too damp for that this spring. They're pretty much dry now after a week in the kitchen.

I thought I would have more soup peas this year. I saved an amount of seeds that I thought would produce 4-5 cups based on last years yield. But it wasn't a good year for peas this year.

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thyme for picking peas

Looks like its time to pick the Capucijner peas. The purple pods are drying on the vines and the tendrils are turning brown. I pick a few dry pods each day and shell them. I haven't decided yet whether to make a batch of soup or save them for planting next year.

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capucijner peas for the New Year

I feel like its a BIG day! We ate my Capucijner peas tonight. Our first taste. Absolutely delicious!!!

I tasted them every step of the way. I'm not sure why the bacon is needed. Really like gilding a lily. The peas taste like ... peas. Almost like fresh summer peas in the middle winter. Aaahhh....

I found a simple recipe (below) for cooking Capucijner peas with bacon. The photo of the cooked peas at this site shows a nice pile of peas on the plate and sounds a lot like my aunt described eating often as she grew up in Holland.

Yesterday, I boiled the peas for about 30 minutes in just enough water to cover them. I had to keep adding more, since they really plumped up nicely and absorbed a lot of water. Then I let them soak overnight in the refrigerator.

As the recipe says, I cooked bacon, then sauteed onion slices in the bacon fat. I added the cooked bacon to the Capucijners as they warmed in their juices. (I tried not to snack on too many tasty little peas as they cooked....)

I served the cooked peas with a small piece of pork chop and a big salad with crumbled goat cheese and fresh picked Florida avocado. Not too bad at all with a nice glass of California chardonnay.

We ate my entire harvest tonight. It made two nice servings. I figure from the peas I saved for seed for next year, I will be able to grow about 10 times as much next year.

Here's a comment from Patrick at Bifurcated Carrots with lots of information about cooking Capucijners. When I get a bigger harvest, I'll try his soup.

Recipe from Klary Koopmans: "It's really easy. I usually fry up some smoked bacon lardons. The amount is really up to you - depending on how much you like bacon (smile.gif) When they are nice and crisp, I remove them from the pan (leaving the fat behind). In the bacon fat I fry a couple of onions, sliced into rings. When the onions are almost ready (nicely browned and crisp), heat up the capucijner peas. (heat them up in their liquid, don't let it come to the boil). Drain them, add the bacon, and warm through over low heat. Add a little pepper, you probably don't need salt because of the bacon. You could mix in the onions, but I like to serve them separately together with all the trimmings (mustards, pickles, etc.)

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Skippy's vegetable recipes

1st harvest of the season

Today I picked our first garden vegetables. Tender pea tendrils, garlic greens, rosemary sprigs and parsley. We briefly roasted the peas, garlic and rosemary over a hot flame and served these with grilled halibut, shrimp, baby potatoes and as always a BIG salad. Delicious. Cheers to the start of another season of fresh garden vegetables!

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harvests from my vegetable gardens

constuction of pea trellises

Last year I used a V-frame structure for my peas, which did not like. It was made from six poles arranged as three Vs, with green plastic mesh stapled along each side of the frame. I found it was hard to pick peas that grew in the center of the frame, the back half didn't get enough sunlight, it took up too much space and it didn't look nice.

This year I have planted three types of peas and needed three trellises. So I tried three different types. My son says it looks like I'm trying to communicate with aliens, but then what does he know about gardening. Anyway, one trellis is an old structure I found in my neighbor's trash. That was the easiest to put up. Another is a zig-zag, post & string trellis. The third is a straight post & string trellis. I'll have to see which works best - and if I pick up any messages from outer space.




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inoculant

A fellow garden blogger (Patrick at Bifurcated Carrots) recommended I try inoculant for my peas and beans this year. Last year I had a miserable crop of both and was ready to give up, on the peas at least. But, here I am, giving it one more try. This year with inoculant. Its the first time I've ever used this, so I did some research.

The inoculant I used is garden combination inoculant from Johnny's Selected Seeds, called N-Dure. It contains a mix of rhizobium bacteria: rhizobium leguminosarum viccae, rhizobium leguminosarum phaseoli, and bradyrhizobium sp.

Bradyrhizobium sp. treats lima beans, rhizobium leguminosarum viccae treats fava beans and garden peas, and rhizobium leguminosarum phaseoli treat dry beans and string beans. I don't think this mix includes the bacterium needed by soybeans (bradyrhizobium japonicum), but I will use it with my soybeans anyway in case it helps. Here's a chart for what treats what.

What's inoculant? Here's some excerpts from an informative fact sheet: "The ability of legumes to 'fix' nitrogen depends on the presence of special soil bacteria, known
as rhizobia, which invade the roots of legumes to form nodules. Within the nodules the bacteria convert, or fix, nitrogen from air pockets within the soil into forms useful to the legume plant. When the legume plant decays, the fixed nitrogen becomes available to subsequent crops. The fixed nitrogen is released slowly, often over a period of several years.

Each legume species has a specific rhizobial requirement. For example, rhizobia that infect medics are different from those that infect clover, peas or lupins. If the correct strain of rhizobia for a particular legume is absent in the soil or in very low numbers, effective nodulation will not occur and little, if any, nitrogen will be fixed. In this case the correct strain of rhizobia must be supplied at sowing. This process is known as inoculation.

Inoculation is essential when a legume crop or pasture plant is new to the land on which it is being sown. Once an effectively nodulated legume crop or pasture has been grown, and the rhizobia have been established in the soil, there is no need for inoculation with rhizobia in future seasons".

I've read that chlorinated water kills the inoculated rhizobia, so I'm hoping mine do OK. I had to water a few times last week using our chlorinated tap water. But generally, we've had good rainfall this spring. So far, my pea germination has been great!

Fabaceae
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topic: soil

planting peas

Today I planted the last of my peas. This is a row of sugar snap peas. I scattered the seeds thickly in a 5 inch wide trough. Then I sprinkled a good amount of inoculant over them. This is the first year I have used inoculant and it is a different method than the inoculant directions recommended (they suggested wetting the peas then coating them with inoculant and then planting them). I found this to be a lot easier. It seemed to work well for my previous seedings of peas this year, which are sprouting well.

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Capucijner pea harvest

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harvests from my vegetable gardens

peas, peas, peas

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