Peas are up!

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

The peas I planted at the beginning of March are about an inch tall now. I'm testing three varieties: Alaska, the romantic sounding Meraviglia D'Italia, and Wando. I planted them all together so that they're all getting the same type of soil and light. So far the Wandos are doing the best, followed by the Alaskans. At a distant third are the not-so-marvelous meraviglias.

Wando peas are supposed to be fairly heat tolerant, so I have high hopes that they'll hold up when our spring snaps into summer. Last year I let my peas mature in the June heat and they turned bitter. Absolutely worthless. I plan to do better this year and harvest them before it gets too hot.



Inside under the grow lights, I have a couple of globe artichoke plants that are coming along nicely. I also started my tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants. Most of those have their first "true" leaves now, so I transplanted them into larger pots. The eggplants were slow to start, but now that I added a heat mat underneath them, they seem to be picking up the pace. That's the good news.

The bad news? The groundhog is back! Or rather, our resident groundhog came out of hibernation. It spent the winter under our deck out back. I spotted it lumbering across the lawn on Sunday, looking notably slimmer than it was last fall. Surely it's hungry!

The city police department provided us with a trap so that we can catch it and get it out of here humanely. With groundhog in place, there's little hope for those peas, artichokes, and everything else we want to plant in the garden.

So wouldn't you know it...we set up the trap on Sunday and the groundhog hasn't been seen since. I'm sure it's still around though. Most annoying is that we have to bait the trap with fresh carrots and apples; this after the beast munched up practically everything edible in our garden (and the neighbor's) last fall. Curses!