Planting Peas

Today I got out to plant my peas. Usually I do them as a double row along the long back of the bed. But I don't need as many peas as I can't eat them. I'm just going to eat the pea shoots. So I'm planting them in two separate patches along the short end of the bed. The first patch was three short rows. I'm not sure if doing three rows 6" apart is a mistake or not. I won't know until they grow if I can get in to pick them well enough.

I put some nitrogen fixing microbes in with them as I do every year - well every year that I remember. But also this year I wanted to try out some mycorrhizal fungi. But to test I only put it on the northwest side of the bed. If the north side grows a lot better I'll have to keep doing it.

I did the same test with some lettuce. Today I planted the two bottom rows and the bottom most one (again the northwest side so I wouldn't forget) has the mychorrhizae on their roots. The other one doesn't. I have a feeling that right now the soil is too cold for the fungi to really grow, but it will be warming up in no time.

The last thing to get planted was the Asian greens. The pretty celery and parsley on the right side of the flat sadly must wait a bit longer for the ground to thaw out more. Hopefully it will be soon. But the Asian greens joined the earlier planted ones in the bed. The endomycorrhiza does not grow on any of the brassica family, so I couldn't expand my experiment.

I've got some more Asian greens and other brassicas hardening off on my back steps. So the next round is soon to join this round. Usually plantings don't come this quickly together, but the seedlings needed to stay indoors longer than normal. I tend to like brassica seedlings to grow no more than 2.5 to 3 weeks before being hardened off. But Mother Nature doesn't always cooperate with me.