This year, we are adding some new foods to our backyard garden. Among those newbies are peas. I love peas and the Tomato eats them up. When I was deciding which type of heirloom peas to grow, I came across the Green Arrow peas in the High Mowing Seed catalog. Since DH and I have been avid fans of Smallville and the show is leaving the air this season, I couldn’t resist ordering them to pay tribute.
In order to grow peas, I needed some trellises. I went back and forth over which type of trellis to order. I love my cucumber trellis from Gardener’s Supply, but also thought about doing an arbor as an entrance to the large tilled space pictured below:
As I flipped through the GS catalog, I found these large obelisks that can be used to grow flowers or veggies. They are good for pole beans and sweet peas, so I bought two. One for peas and one for beans.
The obelisk comes with some assembly required, but can easily be pieced together in about 20 minutes and put into the ground. For planting the peas, I waited until the soil temperature was between 50 and 70 degrees F. I used this soil thermometer from Seeds of Change in order to check daily over the last month.
In order to prepare the ground for seeds, I turned over the tilled dirt one more time, laid down 4 layers of newspaper in order to block weeds, soaked the newspaper in order to anchor it and then laid on a few bags of Organic Mechanics soil and 1 bag of Frey’s Mushroom Compost (bags pictured below).
I can’t say enough about this compost and soil. It is truly beautiful dirt! I’ve been getting it at Terrain and Whole Foods for the past couple of years. Terrain carries the big 2 cubic feet bags, but I can get 1 cubic foot bags at Whole Foods each week when I do our weekly food shopping. After I put the dirt down, I built the obelisk and put it into the ground.
The Tomato joined me in the Ergo carrier in order to plant the pea seeds and a couple of weeks later, we are now happy to see some shoots coming through the ground! I encircled the young pea shoots with chicken wire and the tomato cages that I ordered. This way, our own Peter Rabbit family will be diverted from enjoying our fine organic peas.
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| Two Week Old Peas |
While I will miss Justin Hartley as Green Arrow on Smallville, I can’t wait to watch these Green Arrows grow and have our family harvest them together!
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Looks fantastic! I wish I had enough sun to grow peas. Maybe I’ll try anyway. : ) It was really nice to see you guys Friday. Obviously I wish it had been under better circumstances. Maybe we can all get together once the school year ends!