Pease Porridge hot, Pease Porridge cold

Time to confess. I haven't had much success with peas. I've often heard it said that peas are extremely easy to grow and so are great for the beginner. You just put a few seeds in the ground and there you go. Except mice love the seeds. And slugs and snails love the young plants. As do pigeons. And don't even get me started on the pea moth. So for the past couple of years, while I have had a pea harvest, it hasn't been much of one. And the road to a few delicious mouthfuls of yummy sweet peaness has been paved with disappointment and despair. Until now. I think.

I have a new system of growing them that seems to work for me as it avoids the mice, slugs/snails, and pigeons (though not the pea moth - that will require other precautions). I sow the seeds into individual modules, let them germinate and get to about an inch tall (on my windowsill), move the trays to the lottie, and leave them undercover to harden off for a week or so. Then I plant them out and put in pea sticks immediately (even though they don't have tendrils yet). So far, and I don't want to tempt fate, this seems to be working. I haven't really lost any and there hasn't been a tremendous wastage of seed as there was when I was feeding all of the mice on the allotment.

 

 
And now to the heart of it...what peas am I growing this year? So far, these are the ones I have either planted in the ground, are waiting to be planted in the ground, or are busily germinating on my windowsills...

Hurst Green Shaft
Carlin
Lancashire Lad
Chibby's Wonders
Goldensweet Snowpea
Purple Goldensweet Snowpea
Douce Provence
Defiance
Telephone
Capucijner
Turner’s Spring
Tom Thumb

They're a mix of standard garden peas with the slightly less standard. Telephone and Turner's Spring are tall varieties which will require more support. Carlin and and Capucijner are eaten as cooked dried peas. More about Tom Thumb in another post. And the one I'm most interested in this year is 'Purple Goldensweet Snowpea.' Last year I grew 'Goldensweet Snowpea' and they mostly did what they said on the packet: produced beautiful plants with lovely golden/yellow green pods. Except for the ones that didn't. A few produced purple pods and I saved the seeds from those and kept them separate from the seeds of the yellow/green podded ones. I'm no Gregor Mendel, but I'm hoping to get some plants that will reliably produce purple-podded snowpeas/mangetout. We shall see.

I've got a Golden Ticket!

OK, make mine a Chelsea ticket. My ticket to the RHS Chelsea Flower Show arrived the other day and I can't wait! After dipping my toe into the flower show world with Hampton Court last summer, I'm ready to step out with the big boys and girls.

I'm guessing it will be sort of like Hampton, but physically smaller and grander everything else. The gardens I'm mostly interested in seeing are the Renault Garden (using waste material to sustain the plants), the Laurent-Perrier Bicentenary Garden (my heart fluttered a bit when I saw the design for it), the Plant Explorer's Garden (I thought the idea behind it was sweet), and the Telegraph Garden (mostly because I read this article).

But I'm really excited about the nurseries and plant sellers that will be there. Edulis, Hooksgreen Herbs, Jamaica Horticultural Society, Pennard Plants, Tendercare, Victorian Violas, Whetman Pinks. And so many others selling things that I don't even know that I want/need yet.

Time to dust off my flamboyant floral hat and get my wallet ready.

Crawling

As part of my plan to switch careers (from working in education to almost anything in horticulture), I'm taking classes at Capel Manor College. I finished the RHS Level 2 course in February (word is the results are in April 27th...fingers crossed...) and in September I plan on starting the Level 3 Garden Design course. In order to do that, I have to take an 11 week course called Drawing and Graphics which I started last night. The second half of the course will involve learning how to use real drawing pens and tools, but the first half is just getting us comfortable with the idea that we can really draw despite what our brains (and maybe some unkind people) have been telling us since we were about 10 years old. Not even a walking before you can run sort of thing. We're definitely just learning how to crawl.

Ok, so it's no Piet Oudolf, but it's a start. (You can tell it's a hand, can't you??!)