I knew I had to do something in the garden. The list is still nagging away at me. I once heard someone say that post-it notes were the best thing for her marriage because it allowed her to perpetually nag without saying anything. Therefore the naggy whiney wife was no more – but that innocuous little square of paper took up the nagging role until such time as it was all dog eared and lost its sticky and disappeared or it was actually taken care of.
I have created a nagging garden. The list nags me. I feel actual guilt if I don’t do anything from it or allow something to push into the queue. These things have a need to be done and I need to do it. The thing is they all pretty much need to be done now. In July. If I don’t get them done now, in July, a window of opportunity will be lost and so will the abundance of harvest. I’m not doing this for something to do – I’m doing it to feed my family, so if I don’t get on to it, we will be forced to eat supermarket veggies at supermarket prices!
So I turned a blind eye to number one – the turnip soup as I have a plan for that. I’ve done number two and the leeks and spring onions are loving their new home. Number three on the list says:
“Finish weeding pea bed, enrich soil and plant peas (keep an eye out for frost!) – The peas are nearly ready to go out and will need a nice home to go to.”
Well the peas are actually ready to go into their new home, but it still wasn’t ready. I thought to myself – I can do that, there aren’t that many weeds. But I am a person of integrity – and sometimes it drives me nuts. A lazier version of me considered just pulling the weeds and popping the peas in. The diligent me wouldn’t let lazy me do it. So I weeded – and put all the weeds in the wonky wheel barrow instead of throwing them on the grass behind me. I find when I do that – lazy me never picks them up. She is so naughty! Then I dug over the whole bed with a fork and fluffed up the soil. I discovered something cool. This pea bed is a bed of a thousand worms. There were loads! Small ones, fat ones, long skinny ones – loads! Such a sight to behold.
The other thing I noticed was the top layer of the raised bed was bowed. I knew it was bowed because in the summer I had rammed some sticks down the side to stop it bowing further and leaking soil out the side. But I couldn’t take care of it properly as I would have disturbed the plants growing in the bed. So now was the time for action.
I pulled all the soil away from the edge of the bed and hammered a stake deep into the earth and then I nailed the stake to the top rung of the bed to hold it tight and make the side of the bed smooth again. The soil was raked back into place and the bed was just like new and ready for the peas to go into the freshly fluffed soil. The worms told me I didn’t need to enrich the soil. (I’m a worm whisperer.)
There were only enough peas to do half a row, thanks to the mice – but the new lot are nearly ready and so I should have my full row soon enough. As I put the trellis up to give them something to hang on to, the sky darkened and big fat rain drops began to beat upon my back. It was time to stop, but that was ok because now I can cross off number three knowing I did a good job.
- I have given them all the support they need to thrive.
Come again soon – the boffins say the temperatures are going to drop again, so maybe it is time for number one soup!
Sarah the Gardener : o )
Aren’t peas lovely. Mine are just starting to bloom, can’t wait to eat them.
Hi Lucinda. I pretty much always have peas in my garden, although my succession planting is a bit hit and miss because I forget to plant new ones when the old ones are still doing well. The kids love eating them so when they come ready I try to keep it a secret.
Enjoy your peas – eating out of the pod, straight off the plant is the best way to eat them.
Cheers Sarah : o )
Plant lots , they are the nay peas I like to eat 🙂
Hi Mel… the kids get most of the peas! It’s like growing candy! You’ll have to come round when they are at school and then we can have our fill of peas.
S : o ) xxx
Opps I’m sure I typed only peas!
hehehe
I’m moving toward a no till method of gardening, but the thought is hard because I agree, I love the look of a freshly turned garden. Something about the rich, dark dirt. Well done!
Hi There. I just looked up the no till method and it looks really good, however I would find it really hard to leave the soil alone as a freshly dug bed somehow looks clean and tidy and I’d struggle to just leave stuff there to die. Having said that – there are several beds in my garden with stuff from the summer dying in them, because I haven’t got round to digging them out.
Good luck with your new method – it sounds exciting. I can’t wait to see how it works for you.
Cheers Sarah : o )
I recognise the photographers need to “get that shot!”. I can see the camera on the ground and you precariously perched over the top of it pressing the button “just so…” I do that for mushrooms, my fungal overlords ;). You will get around to that soup one day ;). I love your garden progression. I think I need to get a pile of sticky notes (and not the virtual ones that I have stuck on my desktop monitor that I can hide behind things and ignore!) and stick them all over my P.C. monitor to remind me that it might be minus 2 outside (all day!) but I have a job to do and these garden beds aren’t going to build themselves! Cheers for reminding me that I might sleep but the garden never does 🙂 “to the batmobile Robin!” (not sure Steve would be all that happy to be in tights today…or to be told he has been relegated “Robin” in my equation 😉 )
Hi Fran. You are so funny. But now I have a visual image of Steve in tights!
I end up taking a dozen photos just to get the right shot and then ask Hubby the Un-Gardener which one, of the all very similar ones, he likes the best and then end up picking one that he didn’t. He tolerates me.
I think without a nagging garden I would do nothing. This blogging daily over winter is keeping me on my toes too, as I have do stuff – there is only so much bluffing you can do when you don’t garden. Although I don’t like to think of it as bluffing – more ‘sharing the joys of gardening from beyond the garden!’
Cheers Sarah : o )
I thought that I was the only one who asked my husband which pictures he liked best and chose the exact opposite! 😉 We will be getting out into our large fully enclosed (almost…1 side to put up yet) garden and getting it ready for our own spring planting. You gave me the impetus to get off my derrière and out into the cold and nag myself back into the garden. Cheers for that 🙂
I like the green pea support. Mud is sitting beside me and I’ve just made sure he knows how much I like that idea 🙂
The purple podded peas at the school garden started flowering last week (gorgeous pink/purple flowers) and we now have the first purple pods. I do like the look of peas in general and the taste, even the ones we grew for ‘pea sprouts’ have produced a crop which I picked this morning and sent to the school kitchen.
Sadly we don’t really have room for enough peas to make them a worth while crop in our home garden, although I do have some growing in a tub in the greenhouse, the purple ones!
Well done on getting numbers 2 and 3 crossed off your list.
Hi Elaine. The handy dandy trellis supporting my peas has many functions. The little squares are roughly 5cm and so by laying it on the soil it becomes a handy dandy spacing guide for planting things out and then I generally leave it on the surface if I am sowing seeds and it stops cats pooping on my seeds and chickens scratching them up. It can also be a little fence to stop large plants falling over and loads of other things. You should tell Mud it has more uses than a swiss army knife and is therefore an economy in itself – although there couldn’t possibly be any land rover repair uses – strictly garden only.
Good luck with this one.
Cheers Sarah : o )
I just found this…thought you might like to give it a go 😉
http://spicedcuriosity.com/creamy-turnip-spinach-soup-pumped-for-a-csa/
Hi Fran, Your suggestion came in too late, but I have to say it looks really interesting and as I am going through a soup phase then it may get a turn at being dinner.
Cheers Sarah : o )
I eat soup for most of my evening meals but mine is thick with red lentils, barley and lots of chunky veggies. My daughter loves turnips raw and I rarely got to make soup out of them thanks to her pinching all of the turnips out of the fridge before I could get around to it ;). Glad you made your soup and hope you are enjoying it as much as I enjoyed mine 🙂