Pulling Out Peas and Rotating Compost

Time to pull out the tired peas and make way for the pickling cucumbers.

It was also time to empty a compost tube to make way for this year's garden waste.  The tall tube took all of last seasons waste, rested over the winter and is now dumped in the corner.  The corner was full of finished compost from the short tube dumped last fall and turned throughout the spring.  We sifted through it and got a 6 cu ft wheelbarrow full of nice compost.

One year of garden waste composted down

Some little rodent had made a meal out of old peas.
This is a good sign it is time to get them out
of there and out of temptation's reach

The two trugs in the background hold the sifted compost
from the short tube ready to use as a mulch layer.

I keep a weed pan handy for any weeds.
Pea and lettuce scraps get raked into the soil.
I snipped off the tall Calendula flower and left the plant.

After the peas went in I tamped it down a bit ant put a
 thin layer of wood chips from the chipper-shredder pile.
Then the lettuce went in on top.

I use the water hose to wash all the soil back into the bed.
I give the bed a good soaking.  It will still be a few days until the
cucumber seedlings have their first true leaf developed and are
ready to transplant.  Until then I will water and rake this bed 
to encourage any weed seeds brought to the surface to germinate 
so I can remove them now.

Remember that when you remove pea vines you want to 
break the stem off at the soil level and leave the roots in the
soil.  Legumes have little nodules on their roots that collect
Nitrogen from the soil.  When the plant dies the Nitrogen is
released back into the soil to be available for the next crop.

There were a handful of fresh pea pods still in there
which I ate as I went along.  There were three mature and
drying pods that I stuck in my pocket.  I will let these dry
and put in my seed stash.  Penelope is an open pollinated variety