1st pea bed

the pressure for space is building

One thing about this time of the year is the pressure for pots. No matter how many you think you have once you begin to transplant you quickly realise there is never enough.I do hope my husband is reading this so the next winter time pot cull can be avoided!

Seamus is a bit of a legend when it comes to clear-outs. It's probably a good thing as I do have a slight hoarding tendency, but I think every Gardener has one. The trick is having the space and organisational skills to make your hoard accessible and easily found. All too often something that I thought would come in handy has vanished to the depths of the shed never to be seen again. Yesterday was a surprise when driven by despair (at running out of small pots) at the very back of the shed,in a green bag for life I found several perfect unused seed trays with a light dusting of cobwebs. I hate to say it but the shed could do with a massive clear out! On second thoughts I hope he's not reading this!

B beans transplanted March 22

Under pressure for places on the path out the back, and under pressure for particular sizes of pots you get quite ruthless with hardy seedlings. First up were the Oldambaster broad beans which are a nice sturdy plant having been transplanted from their seed tray about a week ago. But the pots they are in -I now need them for sweet peas-so they have to be transplanted down the veg garden. And to keep them company a selection of the salad greens from out the back are also ready for the great outdoors- I need their pots for snapdragons! Both could share the side aisles in the first pea bed which needed to be built anyway.

If you have never grown peas its really important you put in strong supports to keep them vertical when they are heavy with tonnes of pods. I tend to grow the taller varieties, so that means support at least to 5-6ft. Smaller ones like "meteor" can grow on pea sticks as they only make 1.5 ft in height. After 8 years (had to think about that for a minute)! of growing peas I stick with the following system and it works great for me.

Step 1; empty compost bin into wheel barrow. doesn't matter if it's a bit rough, the peas wont mind. Rough compost is great for climbing beans too.

Rough compost but fine for this job

dig out the channel

fill with compost

Step 2; dig out a channel in the centre of the bed and fill it with the compost. How deep? at least 6 inches if you can.Cover it all over with topsoil from your trench sides breaking up any big lumps as you go. You are now ready to sow directly into the soil or transplant out your first peas.


Step 3; Put up your fencing posts, getting someone with a strong arm to use a sledge hammer to drive them into the ground. Give the post a good tug-it should not move much if at all. Use a staple gun to add your chicken wire to the posts, pulling it as tightly as you can as you staple it in place. This has a lot of weight to bear later on so it must be pretty rigid. Though if you reuse chicken wire from year to year as I do then its hard to get it very taut as it buckles over time. In winter you can just roll it up out of the way and store it.

posts in place

stapling on the wire

Step 4; Finally plant up the bed. Using this system the centre of the bed, next to the wire, is where I will sow my peas. But there is lots of room on the sides of the bed for other crops. Keeping to the rotation I use I'm staying in the pea and bean (Legume) family so that's why the broad beans can be transplanted in here. The salad leaves don't affect the rotations so they can go anywhere but I might as well get a crop out of them before I need the space for French beans later on. Under each broad bean another spade of the compost is added, under the salad leaves some sea-mun-gus.

salad leaves planted out

Oldambaster broad bean planted out

Now the final part, anticipating trouble! For starters has anyone else noticed the explosion in greenfly this last week? Black bean aphids will be hot on their heels so I am adding a few poached egg plants to the broad bean plantings to keep them rich in hover flies which dine on aphids. Slugs were pretty quite while it was hot and dry but with a cooler outlook and the possibility of rain they will re-emerge so it's off to Margarets shop for some spent fairtrade coffee grindings(only the best for MY SLUGS) to keep the slithering army at bay. All I have left to do is to sow peas.According to the moon calendar the next available fruit day(peas fall into the fruit category as we eat the fruiting part of the plant) is Monday the 2nd of April from 6pm on and all day Tuesday 3rd until 8pm.