Vine-ally! Minding Your Peas and Cukes

Our blog post about peas was actually fairly popular.  We gauge such things by the volume of the collective groaning heard from those who are reading it.  If you missed it, you should go read it first to get a flavor of what might actually happen here.

I was out weeding between the carrots and peas over the weekend and had one of those moments that occurs every so often in the country where there is very little noise.  I guess you could say I had some peas and quiet.  I also noted that this must be a very good year for peas since there are some vining into adjacent bell peppers.  If those vines choke out the peppers but result in top quality peas, you might say we won a

No Bell Peas Prize

The Blizzard peas STILL do not endorse Rob's puns

In order to appease you (see what I did there?  You did... ups, sorry), we will actually provide you with some interesting information. After all, I've been told I'm full of it.

For example, we do not actually grow peas and peppers in the same area, so happily, we should not have pea vines choking out our peppers.  Needless to say, the trellising helps contain the pea vines somewhat.  But, since the peas grow vertical, they tend to have a shade zone.  Peppers like their sun, so a shade zone might not be helpful to our bell peppers.  As a result, we interplant bush beans with peppers and we are trying some clover as well.

I was just thinking.  Most people seem to like baby animals.  How about 'baby' plants?  Would you find young pea plants to be...

A pea ling?
Which reminds me!  It is time to give a harvest update to those who are keeping score at home.  In our last post, we mentioned that we were zeroing in on the record (160 pounds) for a season and had harvested 123 pounds at that point.  As of this writing, we have blown past the record and are even lapping our "pie in the sky" goal (300 pounds) for a year's production. 

Variety		Lbs Harvested
Blizzard		84.4
Golden Sweet		94.4
Mammoth Melting		81.3
Oregon Sugar Pod II		116.8
TOTAL Production		376.9

Since this is supposed to be a post about peas AND cukes, we'd like you to know that the cukes...

Look Just Vine to Us!

Lovely coverage and texture.. soon everyone will decorate with them!

They've only just started producing, but the vines are really covering ground.  The season for cucumber yoga has begun!  We do not trellis our cucumbers, which means Rob had to do a fair amount of contorting to pick cucumbers and not destroy vines or fruit in the process.  In short, it can be a fair amount of exercise. 

And, in case you didn't know, peas can get you exercise as well.  We are considering marketing a new hot drink that combines peas and coffee.  You exercise while drinking it (maybe doing cucumber yoga?).  I think we'll call it...

Pea Lattes!

You're welcome.