Give peas a chance

Many people have commented on the amount of work Arizona Backyard Eden must entail, and to some respect that is true. For us, it's an enjoyable hobby- work yes, but pleasant work. However, I think people underestimate the amount that can be accomplished in small increments of time, over time, and that's something I'll try to demonstrate in future posts.

In accordance with my "15 minutes a day" theme for this year, today I went out and picked snow peas. Some of the ones on the bush varieties were really past their prime as the hulls were yellowing, but they still needed to be picked to encourage more blooming. These plants are the vining type, and were planted at approximately the same time as the bush variety, but have been slower to produce. They're in the area of the last year's hollyhock jungle, and probably don't get sufficient sun this time of the year. (Although lack of sunlight apparently has no effect on hollyhock growth)

Mike built the tent-shaped trellis, which is approximately 8 feet high, after the tomato cages we'd used for our first pea planting proved inadequate. It hasn't really gotten a good workout yet. The first crop I planted there was pole beans, which never produced a single bean in spite of prolific vegetative growth. I then tried snow peas in a fall planting, which were choked out by the invasion of the hollyhocks. This year's crop seems to be doing better, although I've had to reseed areas twice where the seeds did not germinate. We ran two drip lines with 6-inch spacing for the emitters down each side of the tent, and planted two pea seeds at each emitter. I'm tossing vegetable waste and other compost materials in the center of the tent...but no hollyhock residue this time!