At last, the time has come for my favourite job in the garden – harvesting peas.
If you’re still at the growing/sowing stage you might like to read a little bit about growing peas here.
Or if you have raised beds you might like to read this.
At the moment I have more of a mouthful than a pan-full but I live in hope, as there are lots of pods with little starter bulges right now so surely there’ll be more?
I won’t exactly have to get a team in to help me with harvesting peas but I am still very hopeful of many decent dinners worth of crops.
Mind you, some plants doing better than others – even though I treated them all the same but that’s life in the garden for you.
I watered them all regularly when it didn’t rain which was during the two-week-long dry heatwave we’re just recovering from here in Ireland.
I fed them regularly with tomato food and I also planted nasturtiums and marigolds near them as kind of sacrifice to the pests and beasts.
I hoped that the pests would chomp on the flowers and steer clear of my precious peas.
Oh and I nearly forgot to mention I supported the fragile plants against my wire fence and I used canes and twigs on the plants in the raised beds to hold them up.
I wish I had used twigs and branches on all the peas in the raised beds – they look so much more natural and peas seem happy to cling to them of their own accord which saves time.
I don’t like the task of tying peas to canes because it is too easy to break delicate little stems.
I collect twigs and branches from our local woodland which is Kilcolgan woods. This is a gorgeous little warren of tracks and trails and we are always looking for excuses to go there.
I might not be actually harvesting peas from the last lot I planted as I probably planted them way too late.
Still, it was worth taking a chance as they just would have sat in an envelope going to waste which is a very sad fate for a pea.
By the way, young pea leaves are lovely and tasty in a salad.
For now, we’ll just have to wait and see if I get a full crop in the meantime if you want some instructions on harvesting peas here they are:
To read about growing other vegetables click here.
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