Because Staring At Four Feet Of Snow Makes Me Think Of Snow Peas!
A rare picture of specimens that actually made it into the house!
A lot of the quasi-intellectual pursuits that happen on the farm tend to occur at my dining room table. Friday nights are really exciting because that is the night that my husband takes our little Polynesians to the gun range with a whole pile of other adolescents for their weekly engagement of competitive shooting. He coaches fourteen kids in the art of target shooting, and not only am I in awe of him for that feat, but there is the added bonus that I get four blissful hours to myself every Friday Night!
That said, I am now at the dining room table and firmly sequestered in the garden planning realm for the evening. Let's take stock of what's happening around me:
Playlist blaring from my Bluetooth Speaker: Check (Where Is My Mind? by the Pixies is an essential inclusion for this endeavor)
Multiple browser tabs open to my favorite seed suppliers: Check
Plastic bin with my surplus seeds from years past open for inspection: Double Check
Spreadsheet open with square footage estimations by plant type and variety: Cross-eyed Check
Shopping List version 1 of 200 next to my laptop: Pre-flight Check
Upon completion of this variety review I will delve happily into that seed shopping list, finalize my choices, figure out order totals with shipping, and by the end of the month have everything ordered for the garden.
So, it being Friday the Thirteenth, there is a full moon lighting up our never-ending expanse of snow. I looked up from my garden planning detritus and beheld that moonlit white, frozen blanket. Thus, I began wondering if I needed to order snow peas.
Snow peas, one of my favorite first foods of spring! They are mostly consumed in stir fry form if they make it into the house, but if I am honest, most of them are eaten by the young people that inhabit the few dwellings on our road. That lovely pea hedge sings a siren song to them as they joust with each other on their bicycles in the driveway. Perhaps snow peas have mythical gravel burn healing powers? I suppose if I spent a long afternoon beating my brother with a wooden sword, while astride my bike steed, I might want the restorative powers that only the consumption of snow peas provide.
My favorite cultivar of Snow Pea is Oregon Sugar Pod II. There are so many things about this particular pea to like:
- They are stringless. I know that I need to floss my teeth, but I don't need my food to remind me to do so.
- It yields like a boss. In fact, I think this plant might have a sense of humor, as it puts out the majority of its harvest when I am trying to get the warm season crops in.
- Fast growth and yield. They pop out of the ground in about a week or so from planting, and two months after that it is pea-snacking and house chow mein feastival time.
- Easy to trellis. I have trellised these peas with chicken wire on t-posts, field fencing on t-posts, and woven baling twine on t-posts. Have I mentioned t-posts yet? I need to get some more.
- Children love them. Even the most fussy eater will gnaw on a snow pea like they are a forbidden delicacy. Usually this has to do with peer pressure, but still.
- They fix nitrogen into the soil! Woo! I always plant some sort of legume where I am going to plant a nitrogen hungry cultivar the following fall or year. I'm looking at you brassica's and corn!
- The flowers are pretty. Okay, so I know this is not a legitimate reason, but I love them!
I'm sure that there are more reasons for why I like this particular variety, but I honestly can't think of them at the moment. I'm pretty distracted by the fact that I have a pound of OSPII seed sitting on my table, and that means that I don't have to order any this year! Yay!
If you wish to procure some of these fine snow peas in packet form, click here.
If you wish to grow a neighborhood children-pleasing hedgerow or market garden amount of snow peas of this variety, click here.
Soon to be a neighborhood children massacred hedgerow of delectable pea-goodness
As always, the photos in this post were taken by the author, on her upbeat, Indie music blaring iPhone.
Written with StackEdit.