30 April 2008
A bean’s a bean, but a pea…
Last year I had hoped to break my duck, as it were, and finally grow myself some peas. Unfortunately, excessive rain combined with allotment indolence, leading to complete allotment abandonment scuppered those dreams. This year I am better prepared and more hopeful. My pea seedlings are planted out and more seeds are sown.
My one concern is that I am struggling to find twiggy sticks to act as support for them. All our neighbours’ gardens have mature trees and are probably full of unwanted twigs and sticks of every shape and size. None are within reach of our garden - which is normally a blessing as we don’t want all that shade. But it does leave us short of suitable pea support. It would be disheartening to fail to pea because of a lack of sticks.
I wonder if a walk along the canal will prove helpful on the twig front. If not, perhaps Mrs Fox could be persuaded to play fetch!
Filed under: Mulch — Clare @ 11:14 am
Good luck with your peas…and I hope you find some suitable sticks. If not that, perhaps some dowels would work — you can often buy “ends” and miscuts at lumber supply stores.
I’ll look forward to seeing how they grow!
(30.04.08 @ 12:04 pm)
I’ve never had much luck growing ordinary peas but have been more successful with various sorts of climbing mange tout/snap peas. As many of them grow 5-6 feet tall canes and netting provide the necessary support. Obviously this can be reused the following year.
Unfortunately I made a mistake this year and one of my snap peas is only 2 feet tall so, like you, I’m scrabbling round for twigs.
(30.04.08 @ 12:50 pm)
Hi Nancy - Welcome to P’Soup. That’s a good idea - I’ll jkeep it in mind if I don’t manage topick anything up on the towpath.
easygardener - Welcome! I’ve also always had much more success with climbers and I particularly like building a big frame for my french beans. It’s a close to engineering as I get!
(30.04.08 @ 1:15 pm)
Hi Clare - I’ve just answered the question I left over at Blotanical for you. I went to school in King’s Heath many moons ago. So did Threadspider - a blogging pal I’ve made here in Chippenham. It’s a small world!
(30.04.08 @ 5:25 pm)
Really enjoyed looking through your blog
We also have an allotment, mostly untended at the moment, why does it always rain when I am free to garden and shine when I’m working! Good luck with your peas, last year we had six! And we shared them!
(30.04.08 @ 5:39 pm)
My peas are very “posh” this year - the only twiggey sticks I could find were the dead tips of my prized black bamboo.
Enjoyed your blog I have added it to my reading list
Regards
Karen
(30.04.08 @ 10:30 pm)
Hi VP - Welcome To P’Soup. What can I say? Kings Heath attratcs all the best people at some point or another!
Hi Chris - Welcome to you too. It’s the unwritten rule of allotments that it rains whenever you have time to spend there. It’s some kind of test of character. I failed! That’s whay I no longer have an allotment but a potager now.
Hi Karen - Welcome. Me too - I have used some of my black bamboo too, but I don’t have enough. Classy, that’s what we are.
(01.05.08 @ 10:50 am)