Pea Planting Day

They say March 17 is the best day to plant peas. Looking at the forecast, I decided to bump that up a bit and planted peas and some other cool crops Saturday in the Potager.

I used the tall tee-pees that hubby had made for the moon flowers and morning glories last year and added twine tied to earth staples pushed down far into the soil.
In this box I planted English Peas (Lincoln) with four heads of Oakleaf lettuce inside the tee-pee. In front of the tee-pee I planted 9 turnips. I'm planning on planting a square foot of turnips every week. I can eat 9 turnips a week, but I can't eat 54 all at once! The onions and the scallions spent the day in the garden with me, hardening off. I'm hoping I can plant them next week.

The box to the left was planted with Snow Bird snow peas. Inside the tee-pee are four heads of Freckles lettuce.

In the garlic bed, I measured out for square foot gardening. This bed was planted with 32 beets next to the garlic, the left side was planted with 32 Danvers Half longs, inter-planted with French Breakfast Radishes. The right side was planted with 32 Kaleidoscope Mix Carrots interplanted with Gourmet Blend Radishes (2009 seeds - they should be okay, I hope)
The center section was left unplanted this week. Next week I am hoping to plant some of the onions and spinach there.

This is the bed all planted out - the garlic is doing real well. All of the grocery store garlic I planted came up.
The three that I found in the compost pile sprouting did not come up. So that is something I will not do again.

While I was in the garden I trimmed back the roses. I hope I didn't over trim them. They were seriously over flowing the space they were allocated in the Potager.

I also peeked under the row cover to see how the cilantro was coming. It's still growing. No big growth spurts, but it's still cool out. I'm just happy that I didn't kill them off when I removed the mulch and added the compost!


All in all it was a good day in the garden.

To own a bit of ground, to scratch it with a hoe, to plant seeds and watch their renewal of life -- this is the commonest delight of the race, the most satisfactory thing a man can do. 
-Charles Dudley Warner, author, editor, and publisher (1829-1900)