I have never before grown sweet pea. This year the winter
had been short and mild in Toronto.
In March it warmed up quite a bit. A gardening freak I was looking for
something to do in the garden and found out that pea can actually grow in cooler
temperature. We like sweet peas. I went on to purchase packaged seeds from
local Home depot.
Soil Preparation:
In the section of the garden where I had planted tomatoes
the year before I decided to plant pea seeds there. According to my reading pea
would be ready to harvest in 60 days, which would take me to end of May or mid
June just in case it took slightly longer. I could plant something else in the
same spot after discarding the pea plants.
I added some black earth, mixed it up with the existing soil
and planted the seeds in three rows. When I was left with some seeds I went on
to create couple of more small patches and seeded them.
While the seeds were working on to germinate I worked on to
build the tailless around them so that once they grow they’ll have something to
lean on, which I learned could increase the production. I wasn’t even sure if
I’ll any peas at all but wanted to be in the right side doing whatever needed
to be done. This was a relatively new garden, just three years old, and I wasn’t
having success in everything. Some of it
due to my ignorance. I was doing a lot of reading and thinking as well. [This
season I actually went as far as to buy a soil test kit and test my soil as in
the previous season I had noticed mid season some of my vegetables just
wouldn’t do any better.]. The result came as expected: Nitrogen, Phosphate and
Potassium all are pretty low. I had added sheep manure and planned to use
Miracle Grow – primarily to see if that combination works well or not. Peas
will be my first experimental subject.
My sweet pea plants grew very well. I admit I had used some
miracle grow, may be twice in lighter dose (lighter than what the label
suggested). One thing needs to be remembered that peas can create their own
nitrogen and it is advised not to use too much fertilizer as it may cause lots
of foliage but little to no peas. After two applications I had totally stopped
fertilizing the peas.
The Spring had been very strange in Toronto this year
(2012). It had warmed up early for sure but then there were those phases of
cold weather that came and went as it wished. The main problem was some days it
would get really hot. While that was good for other vegetable plants peas I
learned may not produce if it is too hot. I was really apprehensive whether I
would get any peas at all. However, one day I noticed some flowers in one of
the pea plants. This was definitely a good news. I became hopeful. In next few
days all my pea plants flowered heavily – beyond my expectation.
Peas mature really fast. From flower to reasonable size pea
could take as little as 3 days. We, I and my little daughter picked almost
every day for a whole week and then every other day. Every time we were able to
pick enough for several meals. We cooked some (fried with potato) and stored the rest in refrigerator. We’ll be
eating those slowly over a month or so. The good part is there are still more
peas left in the plants. I had uprooted some of the plants that were at the end
of their life cycle. Let’s see how many more we can get from the remaining
plants.Here are the yields for a few days.
