Sow your peas by President's Day

"Sow your peas by President's Day", so sayeth the Seattle Tilth folks in The Maritime Northwest Garden Guide. We're about two weeks late this year, but we've both been a little busy. Me, namely building a new deck and sealing up the basement and foundation. And Sarah, catching about a dozen babies and nearing completion of her last quarter in school. And of course Lily is always too busy what with the doctoring and building, painting and drawing and -gasp- even some computer gaming.

Nonetheless, we rallied this past weekend and did a major overhaul of our raised beds. For the last couple of years, we've had two 24" tall raised beds. But this year, we split the 2x12s and made two shorter beds (now 12" tall) from the one tall bed. This fall, we'll do the same treatment to the remaining tall bed. I single-dug the soil beneath the new bed, mixed in some loamy topsoil that was scraped during the foundation and deck work and amended it with some homemade compost made from kitchen scraps. The soil is wonderful in that area and I expect the peas to be very happy.

Lily planted six rows Petit Pois shelling peas (bushes, not climbing), about 8 feet per row, very densely spaced. She loves fresh peas and two summers ago, she ate lunch in the garden most days. She'd be really quiet for about 20 minutes and we'd come outside to find the deck littered with pea pod shells. The petit pois should be good height for her to harvest.

We also planted some snow peas, which we all like to eat with hummus and in salads. They were from Fedco, called "Sumo Snow Peas" and were multi-colored like red, orange, green, blue, gray. Should be big, we hope.

Next up: carrots, leeks, mustard greens, lettuces, all in a cloche (which is on the To-Do list for this weekend).