urban vegetable patch

10 days after the first flower appeared, I see pea pods!! You can only imagine how excited I was. Snow peas are currently selling for $14.99/kg in the market! $14.99/kg,  are you kidding me?

2 Pea Pods

On the upside, I’ve now got peas! On the downside, I got only 2 peas. I don’t think I can do much with it. Oh well! Before I get all excited and all, I thought I will jot down some points for future reference.

My maturing Snow pea plants

So these are my notes:

• They are a cool climate vegetable. Plant either early spring or late Autumn
• They are really really easy to care for. I will even go as far as saying you can plant and forget about them.[link to previous post]
• Pea seedlings are really susceptible to bugs. I am not sure what bugs (my guess is earwigs) but I lost 2 seedlings due to their ferocious appetite.
• Good in fixing nitrogen in the soil. Plant them after harvesting hungry crops (Eg: Brocolli, tomatoes)
• It takes about 2 months to grow from seedling to flowering stage. Once they flower, pea pods will appear shortly, usually within a week.
• Not all sweet peas needs trellis. I bought a dwarf sweet peas from Diggers that are advertised as “No trellis needed”.
• I do not intentionally fertilise them except for the occasional left overs in my watering can of fertiliser.

Things I have read about but have not and will not want to experience

• They are susceptible to mould/fungus known as powdery mildew. This has not happened to me, but I try to only water the roots using the spout of the watering can

Melbourne had a wild weather night on Friday; There was wind, rain and more rain. My mob of unruly tomatos flopped over their existing supports and nearly killed itself. It’s probably my fault for not staking it properly in the first place.

unruly red-fig tomato. Look closely on the bottom left of the bush

While stalking them securely to the existing bamboo stick, I realised some of the undergrowth are starting to grow out and up to get more sunlight. This is not good because as they grow bigger (which is what happened now), they will be heavier and lay in the soil bed for support. This is bad bad karma for spreading disease from soil to plant.

What I did was, I had a bit of a DIY moment with 2 kebab sticks and a rubber band. I tied the two sticks together in the middle (using the rubber band) and poked them in the ground to form a ‘X’ shape. I then gently lifted the branch and rested it on top of the kebab stick frame.This will lift the heavy branch above the ground now. Not sure about its performance in high wind condition; Will deal with it when it comes. For now, I am a happy girl.

Branch support to lift it up and up

Coming soon…

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There is nothing worse than having your beautiful vegie plants seriously attacked by pests. You love and nuture them and suddenly almost overnight, they are devoured by hungry pests!

But the good news is this is a battle that can usually be fought and won, although sometimes the battle can be lost if the hungry hordes arrive unseen.
But here is one of my favourite recipes for ridding my vegie patch of catapillars, aphids and other common pests.

Put into a  spray bottle, 1 litre of warm water and stir in two tablespoons of soap flakes.  Stir this until completly dissovled and allow to cool. Then simply spray onto the leaves of your plants.

It is a good idea, not to spray fruit and vegies within 1 week of picking and remember to store all solutions out of the reach of children.