I continually admit, I don’t know what I’m doing! I’m just a person who loves to play in the dirt and watch pants grit. I’m not a master gardener. There must be a staggering amount if basic gardening rules which I just don’t know. Take peas for instance.
It’s mid-winter here in middle Georgia. Just a few days ago I was out in my vegetable garden (wannabe) sowing peas. My 98 year old grandfather told me that they’d come up through the snow–so why not try a chilly Georgia day?
Have You Heard of Inoculant for Peas?
The seed packet said that the seed peas should be sprinkled with Legume Aid, an inoculant for peas. I’ve been showing (not so much harvesting) peas for the past 4 years. I’ve never heard of using soil inoculant till this year!
Peas and beans Fix nitrogen in the soil, right? That means you can plant something that will feed both you and the soil Right? Not quite. It turns out that peas often need an innoculant, a bacteria, which helps the pea roots fix the nitrogen in the soil. I had no idea.
Basic, Unheard, Gardening Wisdom
This is the type of basic gardening wisdom that I would like to gather and then pass on to others. Of course, hearing isn’t always believing. I, for one, can answer for many things gone wrong for want of believing the experts. Take my peas again.
Mid-winter is rainy season here in Georgia. I recently called out local extension office looking for clues as to why my peas seeds weren’t coming up. “Did you plant right before those heavy rains we had a few weeks back?” Maybe. Maybe I did.
A native Georgia gardener, I’m used to worrying about a lack of rain not an over-abundance of it. Turns out I haven’t learned enough. Those peas I planted a week ago? I thought it smart to plant them the day before it rained. I didn’t expect torrential rain; we didn’t get torrential rain, but it was still a mistake on my part.
My garden was littered with what looked like sprouting garbanzo beans. The pea seeds were unearthed by the gentle rains.
Making hummus from these psuedo-chickpeas didn’t occur to me. Rather, I took a stick, poked holes in the washed-out tired and planted those peas again. Time alone will tell if ever a pea will rise from these rain-sodden rows.
So, it turns out that gardening like the truly good life is a continual adventure of learning, of failures and reattempts and hopefully many a success.
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