Planting Peas

Of course I love peas of all kinds; I've probably told you that a few times already. This years roster so far is Sugar Snap, Sweet Magnolia, Bleushokker, Early Perfection and Mammoth Melting Sugar. Yesterday afternoon I planted the Melting Sugars in the bed where the beans were. I took out the shorter trellis of weld wire and replaced it with a chicken wire trellis down the center of the bed.

Soil prep for pea planting

After I put in the brackets to hold the trellis poles I ran a string between them and dug a trench down the center of the bed. Here you can see I've dumped in about 6 inches of rabbit manure. If you don't have manure compost will also work. Then I leveled the bed, covering the manure with about 2-3 inches of soil. Then I covered the whole bed with several inches of sifted compost.

Planting Peas

Next I used my triangular hoe to make a small trench on each side of the trellis after I put it up. I set the pea seeds every couple of inches in the furrow then covered them with about 1/2 - 1 inche of soil and watered the bed well. It's also been raining off and on since I planted them so they should be coming up pretty quickly, usually about a week this time of the year.

I've written an article about peas, How to Grow Peas and a few years ago I grew six varieties of peas and wrote 6 Pea Varieties on Trial.