(Other than my wife, ha ha!)
Sweet Peas! Just the name of them gets your taste buds anticipating a sweet, crunchy taste. I usually plant them in the fall and then again in the early spring. They don't like hot weather. The ceiling for the high temperatures for them is about 70 degrees Fahrenheit and we're already 14 degrees above that on an average day. Their yield will soon fall off and they'll succumb to the South Louisiana summer sauna. I'll be harvesting every other day to try to get what we can off of them. I like to eat them right off the trellis while picking them.
The sweet pea puts out stunning white blooms all over the stalks, attracting honeybees and butterflies.
The peas have thrived in the location of my trellis. I alternate sweet peas with cucumbers and fertilize with fish emulsion and composted chicken litter. They climb on a cattle panel I have supported with t-posts. You can't see perspective on the height, but they are approximately seven feet tall and growing! Even though their tendrils attach to the cattle panel, the weight of the plant causes the entire plant to sag. To remedy this, you can see that I've taken some baling twine, tied it together and fashioned a "seat belt" to hold the plant firmly to the panel. If I didn't do this, harvesting the peas would be virtually impossible.
I generally walk out to the garden with a kitchen colander and pick the ripe ones off. I generally circle the trellis a couple of times since many of the pods are hiding in all of the foliage. The goats come up to the fence hoping for some sweet peas, but, no dice, goats!
We are picking pretty decent quantities and we'll be blanching and freezing quart bags real soon. Other than eating them raw, and it salads, we like to sauté them in a skillet with butter and salt.
Delicious!
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