sugar snap peas
Last orders from our winter vege garden
We recently went away for a two week break to Western Australia. Just as we left, the weather was warming up and the garden was delivering its last harvest.
Luckily we lined up our next door neighbours to harvest the garden as well as look after the cat. When we got back, they told us that they had so many sugar snap peas, snow peas and broccoli that their family of four couldn’t get through it all!
Even after that, we still had a huge haul of brocolli, as shown above, plus pak choi, and peas.
But it’s now time to wind up the winter growing season, with spring on our doorstep. We need the space, so I pulled out the sugar snap peas this morning, and the old chinese cabbage. The pak choi will be next to go, along with the snow peas and carrots.
Onto the next round of growing (and eating!).
Our current crop of greens
This is what we harvested from the garden over the last few days. There are four or five good handfuls of sugar snap peas and snow peas, plus a few modest heads of broccoli and broccolini. The broccoli is just coming into its own, so I expect we’ll have quite a lot of this over the coming fortnight.
As it is, this is more than enough to keep the two of us stocked up on green vegetables. And this is without harvesting the pak choy and silverbeet, which is ready and waiting. I might also pick out the two weakest heads of chinese cabbage this week, to give us something to eat, and to leave more space for the remaining plants.
Beginner’s mistake: pruning the sugar snap peas too late
As I’ve consistently highlighted, I’m making this up as I go, having never had the opportunity to have a real garden before. Of course, that’s the fun of it.
One lesson now learnt: don’t wait until the sugar snap peas grow to the top of the frame before tip-pruning them. The result is that they keep growing, and keep growing, and then fall over. As you can see from the picture above, this looks more like something from Doctor Who rather than a productive collection of peas ready for the picking.
By contrast, the snow peas were a great disappointment at the outset, barely growing at all.To my surprise, when they did start growing, they started producing peas from the outset. Despite being only a foot and half high, they’ve produced more snow peas than the giant pea plants of doom.
My approach for next year: start tip-pruning the sugar snap peas when they get half way up the frame. Hopefully that will generate more peas, and less greenery.
Our first pak choy
The red pak choy was one of the first things we planted into the garden, and it grew at a huge rate at the outset. Then the rain and cold weather hit, and everything slowed almost to a halt. Still, I’ve been keeping my eye on the pak choy, and tonight was the night.
We did a simple Thai-style stir fry of pak choy, snow peas and sugar snap peas (all out of the garden). Quickly tossed with chilli, fish sauce and lime juice. Served with noodles, yum!
Still plenty of pak choy left, ready to harvest whenever the mood strikes.
Sugar snap peas: 2m high and still growing
When we moved into our new house, I created three climbing frames, the first two for sugar snap peas, the third for snow peas. As you can see, the first bed is growing out of all bounds! Even at 2m high, these plants are still attempting to go up, and would do if I didn’t keep nipping out the buds (apparently this should help to increase pea production).
All three plants are now flowering, hopefully just the start of much more to come. Must remember to mark the first seed pods, so I keep them for seed rather than eating them.
Overall, I’m very pleased with how these have turned out so far, even if I’m not quite at the level of succession trellises. (Maybe next year.)