lovely legumes

We're harvesting sugar snap peas from the garden these days.

I plant my sugar snap peas sometime between February and March. I soak the seeds overnight to encourage them to germinate faster because the longer they sit in the soil, the more chance of mouse attack. Mice love peas and they seem to come out of all the forest nooks and crannies to feast on my pea seed. That's why I have to cover my pea beds with floating row cover to keep the mice discouraged. I have to make sure it is really secure by sealing it with compost all along the edges of the cover, making sure there's not one little area that isn't weighed down or they'll find it and get in under the cover. Sometimes they'll try to chew through the cover but they've always given up on that idea....so far. Many folks who garden here on Mayne Island have told me about how they've planted peas and none have come up....bad seed?....birds?....soil too wet?....I'll bet it's the mice. It's so much extra work, but try the row cover and come June, it'll all seem worth it.

It's safe to remove the row cover when the pea shoots are about this big. The mice and birds may still mess around with them a bit at first and that's why I plant them so thickly. This way, I'm guaranteed a good crop. Planting this thickly also gives lots of extra pea shoots to harvest for delicious and nutritious salads earlier in the season....

Here I'm putting the bamboo stakes into the ground and tying them together as I begin to build the pea trellis. When I have all the vertical pieces in, I then begin to tie in horizontal bamboo canes about 2 feet apart all the way up....I have this idea every year that I want to do some sort of bamboo sculpture/pea vine garden installation but altho' it works beautifully as a trellis I still haven't got the sculpture the way I want it....I'll keep trying....

The vines grow quickly and enthusiastically.....

The pea pods are beginning to fill out! Here you can see that I've planted 2 types of peas in this bed...mainly the sugar snaps with their white flowers and in front, some dwarf grey sugars (a snow pea) for their lovely pink and purple flowers that I add to the baskets and to our plates...just because they are a lovely edible flower. The dwarf grey sugars are also the type I use for my pea shoot production....a sweet juicy shoot.

Sugar snap peas are a cross between a snow pea and a shelling pea...their pod is edible, sweet and tender. They're ready to eat when they're plump and the peas inside are larger than a snow pea.
I read somewhere that a serving of sugar snap peas (about 1 cup) contains 90% of the RDA of Vitamin C. Sounds good. High in Vitamin A and rich in iron, magnesium and calcium too. wow.....healthy stuff.

I have always prepared the sugar snaps whole but this time, I wanted to try them cut, like I do with my runner beans and I love them this way too!
These have been sauteed in a little water for about 2-3 minutes....then tossed with a little butter and salt and steamed in the covered pot, off heat, so they're still a bit crispy and oh so sweet. Sometimes I'll add a chopped herb of my choice (mint and dill seem to be my favourites for the peas)....sometimes some lemon zest...oh so good!

Here they are on a bed of pea shoots with some of those lovely pink and purple pea flowers, some little Russian Blue potatoes and a bbq chicken breast, yum!

nasturtiums

fruits of my labour

Waiting for strawberries to ripen....

waiting, waiting.....hurrrrrry up....

almost.....

YaaaaHOOOOO! Red strawberries at Summer Solstice.

This is my strawberry patch. Two boxes are June bearing varieties and the other two are Everbearing. When I first planted the strawberries, this spot was outside the garden fence where the deer roam. I didn't want to take up all this space inside the garden fence so I thought I could be clever and grow the strawberries in these boxes with wood and wire mesh frames placed on top of the boxes to protect from deer, raccoons, birds, mice, etc, etc. It kind of worked, for a while, but after a couple of years the deer began to stand on top of the frames and push the mesh in and eat the strawberry leaves. Then one day last year I saw a raccoon pulling the mesh back with her little hands to get at the berries inside.
This year, we expanded the fenced area to include this spot so now I get to take the wire mesh frames off the top of the boxes and good thing too since the berry plants really want to grow much taller than the top of the boxes.
Turns out I learned that these boxes are just not a very good idea.....mostly because the plants don't get enough light and sun from the sides and ideally, they should get more air circulation to discourage the mould (botrytis) that we are so susceptible to here on the coast.
This year, after the berries are all harvested, I'll be moving my strawberry beds to another area and taking these boxes out of here. These plants have been here for 4 years so it's time to renovate the beds anyway. I'll start new plants from the runners that they'll be sending out soon to plant somewhere else and this area will become 2 new 40' rows with low tunnels for winter greens growing and for getting some crops off to an earlier start in the spring....