Planting Peas on an Allotment

We spent the weekend preparing a runner bean frame (more of that later in the week) and planting peas. I’m of the opinion that you’d can’t have too many peas, and my family generally agrees. Okay, you have to pick peas every day, and okay, you then have to pod them (we aren’t nearly so keen on mange-tout) but even so, our current planting of 76 pea plants is nothing. We have another 140 to go. There are about 28 peas on 235, supported by twiggy branches, and on 201, until Sunday, we had 24 peas growing up a bit of fencing. There were another 24 to go into the ground, which is what I did.

Here’s the pea fencing, which is wire mesh stretched between a metal post banged into the ground and the fence. And below the fence, holes made with a bulb dibber, to put the pea plants into.We grew the peas (Meteor) in toilet roll inners – which allows them to have a really good root development before we put them in the ground. Because we have a bit of a rodent problem, there’s virtually no point planting peas or beans directly in the soil, as the mice dig them up and eat them. Any they miss, they dig up as soon as the first true leaves appear! It seems that growing the peas in this way means that the seedling uses up the pea from which it has grown, making the plant much less attractive to mice - although pigeons still have the occasional rampage.

The seedlings are planted on both sides of the fence and are tall enough when planted out to immediately self-twine themselves onto the fencing. The first row had horticultural fleece to protect them for the first week or so that they were in the ground, but now we hope that the fact that the are close to the fence and other structures will mean that if we do get late frosts (still 12 days to go to our last frost date of 2008) they won't be severe enough to damage the peas, even if they reach them.
Back in the greenhouse there are 100 petits pois being grown two to a paper pot – because they are even smaller than Meteor, we can rip the bottom out of their pots and plant them both at once, if both come up, and the spacing will still be about right for petits pois. And then there are another 40 Meteor, which is another two rows of fencing, which should be ready in about two week’s time.

That means that if we do get any really vicious late frosts, horrible weather or insane attacks by mating pigeons on the peas that are already in the ground, all is not lost.

Labels: allotment-fencing, allotment-peas