How Gardeners Spend an Evening

Last Nights Pea Harvest

...Aaaaand four hours later.

They look quite nice floating in the pot.  I bring water to a hard boil, add the peas, and stir for 3 minutes.

A two person portion is one cup.  I put them in half pint bags, arrange them in a pan, and place the whole thing in the freezer.  When they freeze solid, they will be neat and orderly and easy to stack.

This blog serves as a great gardening diary.  I take many more photos than I share to gauge the garden progress, and through out the year I look back over years past to see what was happening.  The peas are right on schedule.  Last Years Peas were coming on at the same time.  But if you look at that blog from last June, my potatoes are yards ahead.  Well, they should be.  I planted them in MARCH!

This year, the potatoes are almost 3 feet tall and I have hilled them three times to the point that I've run out of dirt.  I also put the spare potatoes in pots which turned out to have a surprising yield last year.  And this year, I didn't kill 90% of them by watering them mid-day and boiling them!

 

Three weeks ago, the pots were lush and beautiful. 

 I found a perfect "micro climate" for them on the north side of the chicken coop.  There they receive morning and afternoon sun but are shaded from the worst of the mid-day heat.

Last week they were 2 feet out of the top of the pot, and now they are flowering.

I stopped by the nursery and picked up $1.50 worth of the scraps of seed potatoes, and I think I'll root around in my pots (although destroying these beautiful plants saddens me) to get the baby potatoes. Then I'll either replant the pots, or scrounge up some more pots.

I have one more pot of red potatoes that is 6 weeks behind, and this little guy, a sweet potato from a potato a friend of Tim's gave us last year.  About two weeks ago I realised I still had it and it was still firm and edible.  I made a big batch of sweet potato fries for dinner, and stuck the end in this pot.   

So, my first bed of peas is almost done.  Last night's harvest was 13 cups.  Earlier this week, we had a meal of them and I froze the extra portion.  So, that is 15 meals from two, intensely planted, 12 foot rows of peas.  There are enough peas left still developing for at least one, maybe two meals.  This bed was planted in March.  The second bed was planted in succession, Good Friday, and the week after.  It will begin producing in another week or so.  we'll see how the extreme heat affects it's development.