This year I’ve chosen Green Arrow Shelling Peas to grow as one of my small space food garden items. This article will be about how that goes right from the beginning planting right to the end mature plant and hopefully to a successful harvest with delicious peas to eat.
The container I chose for this project is completely different than any of the containers I’ve ever used in the past. It’s not a toy tub at all but a large storage container that I bought at Home Depot.
It’s quite literally the only bin that I can remember ever seeing where the inverted lid creates a perfect tray under it to catch and hold some water. I chose the bin size that would still be somewhat movable once it was full of soil and plants.
When I moved to this current house which is what we call the Blue & Yellow House, we love this house. It’s a seriously solid 1973 beauty. This backyard is much smaller and I decided to streamline it and make the garden a little more uniform in appearance too.
I bought at least a dozen of these containers for all the pink and blue blueberries. Below on the right, is an image of what the backyard generally looks like right now with all the yellow and black containers.
I had two bins left over from the Haskap Moving Day earlier this spring, see the article here.
Those two extra bins left from last year I chose for the growing the peas and lettuce this year. I put all six little pea plant starts in the one bin, it should be plenty of room even when they are fully producing.
I left a gap down the center so that when the plants grow taller and require support, I’ll install a tall trellis about 6′ or a little more so that they can grow up the structure together on both sides at the same time.
If you look at the planter now, it’s not even possible to tell that I originally left a gap down the center. I’ve been harvesting peas off of it for a few weeks now and they are absolutely delicious. They’re delicious raw, they pop in your mouth easy like popcorn and are so healthy! I’d even put them on a veggie platter, they’d be perfect for that too.
Also for dinner, just lightly boil them for a minute or so in salted water. They are sweet and so yummy, nothing at all like the frozen peas from the store! I’ll add some more pictures as soon as the plants pictured here grow a little bit more.
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