Today was a great day to get Snow pea seeds into the ground. Here’s what I did:
First, I had a bed that I weeded and dug up. The bed is roughly four feet wide by about six feet long. Next, I worked in about a quart of complete organic fertilizer, from a recipe I got out of Steve Solomon’s wonderful book Gardening When It Counts, that I made myself out of cottonseed meal, bone meal, dolomite lime and kelp meal–it works very well for fertilizing all vegetables, and I use it on my flowers, roses and clematis as well. So I dug in the fertilizer and raked the surface smooth, breaking up any little clumps with the rake and my hands to get a really smooth surface. Last night, I had put my seeds into a cup and filled it with water. Today, I carefully dumped out the water, and used these seeds for planting. The outer coating of the seed need to be soaked to help them germinate easier and get off to a quicker start. The variety of seed I used was organic Snow Pea ‘Oregon Sugar Pod’. I made short rows across the bed about one inch deep, planted the seeds approximately two inches apart, and covered them with soil. Afterward, I carefully watered with a watering can with a large rose to give a soft, light sprinkling so as not to dislodge my newly planted seeds, and that’s it. We should be eating stir-fried snow peas in about sixty days! It needs to be at least forty degrees at night for the peas to germinate, and in looking at the weather reports I may luck out. If not, I can always put three PVC hoops over the bed and cover it with plastic until the chilly weather passes. I will put some sticks in for the peas to grow up after they germinate, just in case I need to cover them, which is hard to do with sticks in place.
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