Planting Sugar Peas

Sunday afternoon before the rains came, I took advantage of getting our sugar snap peas planted on a 30 foot row.  We love these things.  It is the closest thing in the garden to candy.  They are sweet and even kids love them.  To me, they are best raw, but steamed in butter ain't half bad.  I have a cattle panel that I use for a trellis and they will send out little tendrils that grab hold of the trellis as they grow upward. They'll bloom beautiful sweet pea blooms that smell great and attract bees.

So if you want to plant, you've got to get your hands dirty.  Nothing wrong with that. Here's Benjamin holding up a handful of rich soil.  In fact, we love dirt around our place.  It is no coincidence that the dirt forms a heart shaped pattern in his hand.  If you could look closely, you would see the dirt is teeming with tiny organisms, root hairs, organic matter.  It's healthy.  It's ALIVE!

We love dirt!

Another sign of healthy soil is when you find one of these boogers in there.  In the past, we couldn't find an earthworm.  Now you can't dig a hole in the garden without finding them.  It is a testament to not using pesticides and herbicides and using compost and organic matter to amend the soil.  The worms come, dig, feast on good things in our soil, aerate the soil, lessen compaction, enhance drainage, and then poop and their castings fertilize our crops.  What a deal!  I don't have to pay them a cent for all that work.

Not a gummy worm

So Benjamin and I made quick work of digging a trench 30 feet long and 1/2 inch deep and got some seeds out that we've stored in the freezer.  I also used some open pollinated seeds that I saved from our crop last year.  Seeds are cool in that they're essentially dead - dormant, but miraculously, if put in the soil and watered, they'll awaken (sometimes after years) to produce good food for you.

Pass the peas, please

I dropped them in the dirt about two inches apart and then got ready to cover them up.

Let's get ready to rumble...

The little roots you see are from neighboring shallots, garlic chives, and cilantro that are all growing nearby.

Our roots run deep.

In fact, you can see the garlic chives and shallots to the left.  Those are hard to beat in an omelet with some fresh eggs.  In the bottom right you can see some cilantro that came up on its own from last year's seed. That is great in pico de gallo or cooked with eggs as well.  I have a ton of cilantro seeds, if anyone is interested. When it warms up, cilantro bolts (flowers and goes to seed) quickly, so you want to plant them and eat them fast.

If you notice that red thing in the middle of the photo below, I have a story about that.  I was running around like a chicken with his head cut off the other day looking for my Leatherman pocketknife as I needed to cut some baling twine.  A gentleman pulled into the driveway and asked what I was doing.  I told him.  He said that he had the perfect thing for me.  He grabbed an eight inch butcher knife out of his truck that had red duct tape wrapped around the handle and told me that he wraps red tape around all his tools so he can find them easily.  I told him, "Good idea!"  As I handed it back to him, he said, "It's yours."  He told me that he paid 10 cents for it at the Goodwill Store and he knew I'd make good use of it.  AND I DID!  I used it to dig the trench for planting our peas and it worked like a charm.  And since it has red tape on it, I won't be losing it!

Lets cover 'em up

I don't want to disturb the soil structure so I try to no till as much as possible.  The red-handled long knife was the perfect tool for planting peas and the gentleman's timing for coming up my drive was most fortuitous. In fact, in about 68 days when these peas are ready for harvest, I'll repay him for his kind deed with some sugar snap peas.