Tag Archives: Peas

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April Showers bring HAIL?

The past month hasn’t seen much activity in the garden.  April, true to its history has been wet, wet, wet.  A surprise hail storm lasted long enough to see a rather large pile of hail exit the roof and establish itself in front of our porch.  Its remnants were still there the next morning when I left for work.  Fortunately, the hail was small and didn’t seem to do any damage either to the balcony lettuce or to the spinach seedlings just coming up at the community garden spot.  I’m sure the lettuce was wondering what was going on.

This Just In

Today saw the planting of two varieties of potato, Makah Ozette and Nicola. The latter is a European variety of a lower glycemic potato. I’ve only found ONCE source in the US so far, the Main Potato Lady.  Once again I opted for planting in half buried large nursery pots, 6 in all. I learned about this method from a community gardener in the UK.  Also into the ground went some beet (Cylindrical) and radish (French Breakfast) seed.  Yeah its wet but there wasn’t a lot of disturbing the soil except where the potato pots were ‘planted’.  I think they are happy.

Whats Growing

Broccoli and Chard:

4 starts of each went in the ground near the end of last month.  I wasn’t planning on planting chard but they are so pretty and I was so needing to plant SOMETHING.

Garlic:

Last years two garlic plantings are coming along nicely.  Looks like I have near 100% of what I planted up and ready to start the season.  I gave them a bit of fertilizer last month and with all this rain they should be getting the full benefit.  Bring on the sun.

Kale:

Another overwintered crop.  I planted these from starts late last summer.  We’ve been eating on them for about a month now.  They have started to go to seed but the dog will eat the unopened flower tops so life is good.

Leeks:

The last of the overwintering trio.  A fellow gardener offered up some tiny leek starts last spring.  They ended up getting overshadowed last summer and stayed pretty small.  They come back with a vengeance this year and are almost ready to harvest.

Lettuce:

The old lettuce seed I planted last month did nothing.  Not surprising.  I think the seed was circa 2014.  I picked up some starts from a local garden center and tucked a few starts of the old Amish variety in next to the onions and a few other from a mixed lot into the balcony planter.   I decided to bite the bullet and buy some fresh seed and start those in a plastic container inside.  They are about half ana inch tall now and will be tucked out here and there once things get more settled.

Peas:

My nearly vegetarian dog LOVES snow peas.  We do too but she ends up eating most of them.  I planted half as much as I did last year, a single cardboard trough worth.  The idea was to get them up indoors, grow them out on the balcony to about six inches then plant out.  The scheduled roof redo meant they went into the garden early.  So far so good.

Spinach:

The two varieties of spinach are coming along nicely.  Spinach bolts when the days get to be a certain length so the season tends to be short here as we get long pretty early.  Its a pity, the climate could make for some awesome spinach almost year round.

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Rain, Rain Go Away

Mother  Nature must not have heard but I only get two days off every week.  Those two days are really the only days I can do anything in the garden.  Since Sunday morning is filled with church, Saturday is typically my gardening day.  WHAT was the weather thinking by raining all morning.  That was supposed to start tomorrow.  Alas, the weather forecasts can’t really be trusted rain-wise so I shouldn’t be surprised.   I made the mistake of soaking the been seeds overnight so I was pretty much committed to planting if I didn’t want to throw them away.   I could have waited for tomorrow but it is supposed to rain more then.  My todo list included a couple of 10′ boards for either end of my plot, building a pea trellis and planting pole beans.  I finished all except the boards.

Pea Trellis of jute string between two horizontal poles.Typically I use a net for the pea and bean supports.   I swear each year that I am going to reuse the net and every year I end up throwing it away after trying to get all of the plant material out of it.  I decided this year to do it a little different.  I picked up some green jute at the local hardware store and strung it between two rods at the top and bottom of two t-bars.  The string will end up stretching and probably get much looser than it is but I don’t think the plants will mind.  The pea trellis is finished and the poles are in place for the been trellis.

I tried a new variety of pole bean this year.  Last year I planted Helda and they did great but their flavor was a little intense for me.  A large Roma type bean I liked them but opted for a more traditional type bean this year.  I ran across Kentucky Blue Pole bean and thought I would give them a shot.  A cross between Ky Wonder and Blue Lake they are supposed to have the best of both worlds.  I sowed them fairly thickly as I had soaked to packets.  One would have been sufficient so I have a handful of left over swollen seeds.  I’ll end up potting those up in little containers and offering them up to a fellow gardener.  I had to pull some self seeded arugula before I could  add bag of compost and some blood meal to the bean patch.  I had planted the arugula last year and let it go to seed.  I now have enough arugula to feed half of the county.  We don’t eat much of it (a little too bitter for me) so a fellow gardener is going to liberate it from my patch.   I ended up washing the seedlings I pulled and they are in the fridge waiting to join some lettuce and spinach in the next salad.

I was able to offload some greens to a fellow gardener.  I begged her to take more but alas one can only eat so much Mesclun Mix.

All in all a productive morning and I got out of there without getting too wet.  The boards will have to wait for another day.