The Pea Whisperer

Growing garden peas is a mad (is there any other kind?) passion of mine. It has to be since growing them in southwest France with its long, hot summers which often begin mid-May pose a challenge of perfect timing. The crop needs cool temperatures but also around ten weeks from sowing to reach a maturity suitable for harvesting meaning those purty little seeds have to be in the ground by the first week in March so they can be plucked before the heat hits in earnest. But the soil temperature must be around 60 degrees F or else they will just sulk or rot or be nibbled by birds. Even if our climate provided a more generous growing window, harvesting them at the peak of sweetness would remain exacting. The pods can seem full and yet inside the peas can still be too small, therefore not yet developing the sugar which turns them into green candy. Or the converse, they are obviously too full, bulging with peas which marched right past their sweet glory into starchy stodginess.  Thankfully, the pods are translucent when held up to the sun. If the peas are just touching each other, the pod goes into the basket. This season I got in three beds of peas! Not the one or two I have been toying with the last ten years, but three whole whopping beds! 

The pea variety beloved by me is the dwarf one. No staking is required and they can be eaten raw from the pod. The other common type is a vine sporting wrinkled peas that must be cooked before eating and also can be left to dry in their pods while still on the vines enabling them to be stored in the cupboard.

Best time to remove the pods from their plants (carefully detach them so as not to uproot the shallowly rooted, still producing mother lode) is in the cool, early morning. If they do have any residual field heat then they first will have a dunk in cold water before being dried, placed in a plastic bag, and put into the fridge awaiting processing which takes place within a week. Harvesting which lasts several weeks has to be done at least twice weekly to encourage more pods to form. In my three-bed case, I pick pods from one bed every day, rotating through the series of three. The total number of pods picked were fifteen litres which amounted, once shelled, to two and quarter litre of peas. Not any peas, but the most pampered, tenderest, sweetest ones, such that a smaller quantity than usual will pack a huge taste punch in our favourite dishes such as minestrone, chicken pot pie, shrimp fried rice, creamy shrimp pasta, and a side of peas and carrots to our pot roast of lamb leg. En bref, a little of these wonders go a long way.  Ok, I am justifying my labour, but they are stupendous. I am guessing our harvest which has been frozen in appropriately sized ziplocked portions will last from four to six months. Processing consisted of boiling them in a large pot of water for two minutes and then shocking them in an iced bath. I spent a day in making the ice as there's only one small tray chez nous. Precious ice diamonds. Next time, I will freeze water in plastic containers and plop instead a few of those into the bath.

The shelling took place under our ivy-covered pergola.

These are the kind of spent shells with which I can live.

The most common number of peas in a pod are about six to eight. Sometimes there a niner (as in the below photo) or even a tenner.

When they become too mature, they lose their roundness and resemble a set of teeth or a row of corn kernels. The few overgrown ones reluctantly got discarded. Looking forward to spring pea madness in 2021, hoping for three beds again, and who knows, maybe four?

À la prochaine!

Late Spring Garden 2019, Part Two

It's lovely to have home-grown goodies in the freezer. Here's an ample portion of rhubarb crumble (my recipe) with strawberries fresh from the patch drenched in cream; all which goes well with coffee.

The two beds of peas have been harvested/shelled with most of them parboiled and frozen. The spent plants have been ripped up, put on the compost, and soon the beds will be prepared for carrot and beet sowings. Yup, you are seeing right, that's two peas in a pod!

Despite the weather being more stormy than not, I took the shelling project outside under the pergola.

Partly curious, partly seeking shelter, Eli the Cat jumped up on the table to sniff and inspect more closely.

The pink flowers on the left are penstemon while those feathery, tall plants on the right are asparagus. Many young shoots were harvested back in March, but some were left to develop into what I consider to be a summer hedge. A hedge until . . .

. . . the storm. Their height has been reduced sharply and a good number have snapped at the base of the plant. I am trying to rehabilitate the ones remaining by freeing those trapped under the dead stalks and mounding the soil around them so they have a chance of resuming an upright position. Most importantly, regardless of trying to reclaim a hedge effect, the focus is to keep them alive because without fading autumnal foliage, the roots will not receive required nourishment, threatening the next season's crop.

However, the penstemon so far has weathered the storm perfectly.

The lavender in the front garden is blooming. Bees love it and there are a few in the photo below!

I love to catch a glimpse of lavender haze through other bushes, in this case, through the graceful, mahogany-branched, airy-leaved abelia also beloved by bees.

I have been trying to order this deep-mauve osteospermum for a couple of seasons from my online nursery but they sell-out this item before I can order. Not this time! They will bloom all the way through October/November.

À la prochaine!

Fruit, Veg, Flowers & Feline

Fresh April green here and there has morphed into verdant lushness all over. The first fig crop is forming while the second and more substantial one will happen in autumn.

Little fuzzy olive-green eggs are dotting the peach tree.

The strawberry harvest at present is enough for making a strawberry banana smoothie every other day. Peak production will be reached in several weeks.

Rhubarb is being picked now, the peas will be in a few weeks, and the potatoes at end of July.

The soft green of fennel (the herb, not the bulb) cosies up to flowering sage.

Comfrey is putting out young leaves and buds. It's an amazing plant for other plants as it is used as a fertiliser tea and a compost accelerator.

The weigela's flower-laden branches are draping the front garden in crimson.

The peony is continuing to set just a few blooms as I suspect the last couple of winters were too mild to give it the cold required for abundant flowering.

Hardy miniature gladioli loves to self sow where I dare not to as in smack up to this ivy-covered pergola pillar.

The Ferdinand Pichard Bourbon rose is paying no attention to Dirac the Cat napping in the southwest sous sol window as all of its blooms are leaning directly towards the south to get as much sun exposure as possible.

À la prochaine!

Midwinter Garden 2019 Part 2

Just after I sowed a pea bed, frosty winds came bearing down, so before twilight deepened any further, the bed got a cozy horticultural fleece tucked snugly around it. This morning, the cover was stiff with ice. Here's hoping the shallowly planted pea seeds are still viable.

One of the first perennial food crops that gets attention is asparagus. A violet-tinged spear tip here and there means their patch needs some work.

Since the six-year old asparagus planting lustily overgrown its original border of terracotta roofing tiles, the tiles have been removed hence I am in process of digging a trench around the bed, heaping the displaced soil onto the bed itself. Heaped soil is great for asparagus by keeping the bottom of their stalks in the dark, thus blanching them a bit.

Moss fills the space between lichen-covered pavers.

You would be forgiven if you mistook these glorious skeletons of hydrangeas as a flurry of glasswing butterflies.

Lamium galeobdolon—one of its several common names is yellow weasel snout (!)—has turned its veins burgundy.

A cyclamen unfurls a burst of crimson, laughing at the wind and the cold.

Shade-loving, fragrant sweet violets have spread along the west side of the house forming a carpet because of their powerful way of seed dispersal: their pods snap open, injecting seeds far and wide.

A pop of yellow is always welcome. Thanks, stonecrop!

Each year, I keep adding what is regarded in horticultural jargon as green bones. We talkin' evergreen. One of the older and venerable 'bones' is this yucca which spent the first half of its twenty years in a pot on a Grenoble balcony and the second half in Angoulême soil. It now has several trunks and is close to my height.

À la prochaine!

• 
  Diana Studer

  Will you change from G+ comments on your blog? That is going to sunset too.
  
  I nurture one pot of violets.

  REPLY

  
  17h

  
• 
  Michelle Beissel

  +Diana Studer , if Google allows the maintaining of past comments, then since I hardly get comments outside of G+, I'll opt for the status quo as I really love re-reading old G+ comments when I check past posts (my blog is my recipe book). If not, then all those comments will disappear and that would be sad. Yay for that pot of violets!

  REPLY

  
  17h

  
• 
  Diana Studer+1

  I think the G+ comments will disappear. But there has been NO feedback from Google.
  Maybe edit the comments you value into the text of the blog post? (Which is what I did when I edited posts from my former blog to the current one)

  REPLY

  
  15h

  
• 
  Michelle Beissel+1

  +Diana Studer , excellent idea. Thanks!

  REPLY

  
  15h

  
• 
  Diana Studer+1

  and do it soonish ... they keep jumping the date forward!

  REPLY

  
  15h

  
• 
  Kim Quinn+1

  The hydrangea leaves are so beautiful! I enjoy your posts so much and keep 2 small garden beds, 3x6 and 3x8. They were allowed to rest this past year with a cover crop of hairy vetch, clover, tillage radishes (pods on stems, yummy!) and supposedly field peas. Never saw any of those. It was mixed in April and broadcast over and just whacked 3 or 4 times through the summer when it hit knee height. Now, I am dreaming of herbs, Kale, chard, tomatoes herbsherbsherbs. Wish I had a bona-fide rosemary hedge!💜

  REPLY

  
  13h

  
• 
  Michelle Beissel

  +Kim Quinn , thank you so much!
  
  Your garden interface sounds wonderful (I enjoy whacking cover crops, too). Keep dreaming (and doing). Rosemary is easy to propagate so all you need is a starter plant. If you run out of soil, and you have some cemented area, you can make a potted hedge.

  REPLY

  

Diana Studer

1 day ago

+

1
0
1

 

Reply

We have a potted hedge on two sides of our kitchen patio. Third side is an in the ground planter (and the fourth is garden) Ours is spekboom Portulacaria afra (which is also edible in salad, a different taste and texture)