Planting Peas – Let the Garden Planting Begin!
Planting peas is one of the easiest garden planting tasks, especially with my new garden set up. Today, I planted 1104 peas. That is not a mistake, and they were all planted within 2 hours, without any rushing. laughing… As you may be able to see, I adore peas.
In America, there is only one heirloom variety of shelling peas that get at least 6′ tall, which I wanted for the back garden area. All of the rest are 2′ to 3′ tall plants. Sometimes, they may get to 4′ tall. pfffttthh…
I came across a couple of varieties from Ireland being sold by Adaptive Seeds. The three “tall” varieties are Alderman (American), Carruther’s Purple Padded and Clarke’s Beltony Blue. I planted 3 varieties of the shorter, regular shelling peas in the front garden. They are Green Arrow, Maestro and Lincoln.
Last night, I counted out the amount of peas per garden bed, put a masking tape label of the variety on the tiny bag and then added about 1/2 cup of cold water to each bag before zipping closed. I soak my peas the night before to give them a boost. I do not have any of the legume inoculant on hand. Ah well. They usually do fine with or without it here.
Using the cement block holes on the side with the trellis, each hole got 6 peas per hole. Too much! you say? No, it is not. Peas love to be crowded together. I do sometimes have to get an errant tendril to latch onto the trellis because a pea has decided a neighboring vegetable would appreciate its hugs… or something. I used a dibble and made the holes for the peas in 4 of the holes in two of the cement blocks, popped in the peas, covered them and then moved to the next spot. Himself came in behind me and gently watered the beds.
I have not yet finished getting the beds ready for planting. I got the “pea spots” in the blocks finished a few weeks ago. I can easily and leisurely get the remaining beds done by mid-May. I can get the lettuce in the first beds finished first if I choose. Lettuce does not mind cool soil.
As it is, I am almost done with the potato beds. I will be planting the potatoes next week. I only need to top off with some more soil to the soil I already had amended. Our nursery had organic pelleted chicken manure, a favorite for many around here. I dug in a little and looked for weed roots as I fluffed and fed the soil. We are having thunderstorms right now. Cool. That will get those beds well watered before I finish with them.
For the regular beds, I am going to use old, low-quality wool as an amendment. Most will be at the sides where the bricks meet and a little a good 8″ down. Wool gives nitrogen and good for water retention. Where certain plants grow, like carrots, one needs to watch the nitrogen levels unless you want carrots with appendages or vegetable plants with great foliage but little vegetables. It is all a balance. I figure it out as I go, going with my inner-knowing – instincts. They do not steer me wrong.
Planting Peas has become easy! Yea!
The back beds were beyond easy. One folding garden stool, bags of the soaked peas, one thrift-shop fork and a dibble. I worked my way up and down the rows of cement blocks with ease. The long bed for the green beans was left untouched. It is still too cool for them. The soil is only averaging around 45° to 50°.
My daughter is building her garden right now. She loved our garden beds when they came up last December. they found some cement blocks at a very cheap price and are installing them. I should say my son-in-law and grandson are. ;D She has the strawberries planted already, 5 varieties of them. I found a rather cool measuring thingie for squarefoot gardening I need to get out to her soon. Finding a big enough mailer has become rather a bug-hunt. She also planted a lot of daffodils last year. They are all blooming right now. Gorgeous!
A few of the strawberries are getting leaves! I had amended and gave loves to those beds a few weeks ago. I have strawberry jam by the bucket. If they do not all take off, it will be okay. I will not be seeing the family this year. Shipping a case of pints would be rather frightening in costs.
Musings
My 6+ year old laptop committed suicide. Trying to do anything, even read mail, on a tablet is horrible. I do not innerstand how anyone can use a phone or tablet to do anything online. ugh!
FWIW- If you put Windows 10 OVER an existing version of Windows, like I did over Win 8, if something goes wrong, you cannot retrieve anything, nor can you reset it or use a backup drive, boot drive, anything. It becomes an ex-computer.
It had went wonky on a Monday and I got it to use the restore point. I quickly backed up all of my files, which I had not done for way too long anyway. A few days later, it went blue-screen-of-death again and would not use the restore point anymore. Supposedly I may be able to overwrite everything, including all the stuff from the company (HP) with a clean copy of Windows 10, making it usable. I may try it.
I ended up replacing the laptop with a new one, going for last year’s Lenovo Ideapad 3 with 14″ screen. I do not like giant computers or laptops with 15″ or bigger screens. The old laptop had a touchscreen. I am pleased to say I only touched this non-touchscreen only once, surprisingly.
The only complaint in reviews was the cameras they put on the webcam. Something like 300p or something. This year’s have the better ones. You know those fancy filters for age, supposedly they take a few years off of one’s face? Well, it is about like that. laughing hard… I do not care. I do not do videos. As long as those videos I watch are nice or the person I am talking to, I am fine. So what if I am slightly grainy? Might as well add grainy to orneriness, yes?
That above is the long reason of why I had not posted sooner with garden updates, recipes and the like. Anyone adept at writing articles on a tablet or a teeny-weeny phone, the more power to them. I do not even have my phone hooked to the internet! I get phone calls and texts. The latter is from my daughter. I have to let her know each time we go somewhere and arrive home. Bonus, photos of the grandsons. If I am real lucky, the granddaughter sends a photo or video. The last video was of my great-granddaughter using the doggy door. Yep, she figured out she could go out with the dogs anytime she wanted. laughing…
I hope you all are having a lovely Spring. If not, find the bright spots and focus on them. Life becomes much smoother when you do. Hugs!
