Planted Sugar Snap Peas Today!

The best crop of sugar snap peas we have ever had here were planted early, on January 21th. Here is central North Carolina it gets pretty hot by the end of April, peas do not like warm weather. So given my work schedule was open today I went out and got my hands dirty! It is supposed to rain the next two days so it was now or wait til the soil is dry enough.

I worked the two 8 foot strips were I was planting with a shovel then sifted the soil with my bare hands. I had to remove acorns, henbit and other weeds. I've told this before and will tell it again as we have a lot of new visitors here. First inoculate the peas with a little water and inoculant, I poured the 3/4 lbs of peas into a quart container and shook them up so the inculcate would stick to the peas well.

Here is the real trick plant your two rows about a foot apart under your trellis and drop the peas in very heavy like in the photo below.

Putting so many peas in the furrows is insurance against birds, squirrels, slugs and peas that do not sprout. This way you get a nice full trellis of peas. It just works, Meg taught me this. These two rows 8 foot long may produce 4-5 gallons of peas this way.

Then cover the rows with wheat straw to hold in the moisute and hide the peas from critters finding them. Then we let the peas grow. This trellis will need more strings before the peas grow very much. Make sure your peas do not fall over by making sure they stick to the trellis or the plants will bend in half and you'll loose your pea crop.

 Above is our garlic patch, that first one is about 3/4 inch in diameter. I added fertilizer today to the garlic. What type, grocery (coop) store garlic. That green clump behind the garlic is the sugar snap peas Meg planted last fall.

 These hellebores opened today in the garden. The white one I call Breezy 13 and the pinkish one I call Breezy 14. These were given to us by our friend Breezy, she gave us a lot of them.

 Above is Henbit a weed that grows in our lawn, it is very invasive, but the bees like it and I heard the pollen from it is red.

 Here are some of my girls with pollen sacs on their hind legs from today. The brown pollen below was being carried in like crazy. Three colors of pollen was seen.

 Anemone blanda I think from the garden.

 Firefly crocus is still hanging on. It is my favorite, for now.

Gypsy Girl crocus has just opened up, kind of sneaky about it, never saw it coming.

Garden update 3rd week of January ect.

The cold frames have had some new stuff planted. I removed what was left of the nasturtium (which froze) and planted Detroit Red Beets, Early Blood Turnip Beets, Mesclun salad mix. These were planted in the solo cold frame nearest the beehive. This was on January 21.

In the double cold frame left side I harvested(pulled out) half the mustard greens and half the Lactino Kale. I then planted White Stem Bok Choy and Bloomsdale Longlasting Spinach. In the right side cold frame I pulled half the arugula and planted more Mesclun salad mix. Planted these on January 23.

It have been lightly raining for days now. We are hoping as soon as it dries up we'll plant Sugar Snap Peas out in the garden.  We still have a 3 foot tall Sugar Snap Pea patch that was planted last fall and it has frosted tips currently. Do not know if these peas will produce peas or become fertilizer. The Garlic in the garden looks great, the onions are still skinny and puny looking.

Hellebores in the garden 3 mentioned previously are blooming and 25 others have buds on them, several will be open in a few days it appears. The best news is out of those 25 budding plants 3 are my new doubles!

 These hellebores were blooming at Duke Gardens when I visited there last Friday. This one above and below is called Helleborus 'Snow White'. It was a huge clump don't you think?

 To me this hellebore is yellow, no name was given with this one.

Here is Helleborus Erichsmithii 'Winter Moonbeam'

This beautiful red hellebore was labeled at Duke Gardens Pine Knot Double Strain. You can see clearly it did not come out as a double, this happens with hellebores. I have a handful of 2 year plants that could become doubles or end up like this a single.

Crocus, the blues ones look to be rain drowned now and the yellow ones are busting out waiting for a sunny day. Daffodils a few have small buds on them, most are just breaking ground. The snow drops had a bad year it seems. I noted the same thing at Duke Gardens on Friday. Our snow drops are barely out of the ground what is left of them.

Snow Drop from Duke Gardens last Friday.

Duke Gardens did not have any crocus I could find last Friday. This photo was taken in our garden today. At one point there were 3 bees feeding on these crocuses. The bees were busy busy, at one point mid day I could hear them buzzing from our deck 60+ foot away. I did see them again with orange, yellowish and light brown pollen. At one point they were so busy there were 5 bees with pollen not able to get into the hive due to so many bees exiting the hive.

Here are the bees just before lunch, it had been raining and cold for several days. One word busy....