Skip to content

Mary Lowther column: Time to start sprouting some peas

Reserving a bed just for seed-saving has to be an important fixture in my garden plans.
15476505_web1_Feb13Lowther
I’ll allow the large turnip to go to seed for next year’s crop. (Mary Lowther photo)

By Mary Lowther

We can start a few cool season crops now and hope that by the time they’re ready to be transplanted the soil won’t be frozen. If the soil is still not thawed enough, I’ll re-pot the seedlings into bigger pots until the soil is ready. I’m pre-sprouting my Oregon Sugar Pod peas, anticipating a harvest starting the first week of April. This bush variety reaches close to three feet but the peas I’m starting in three weeks are climbers so I’ll erect a net for them. I’ll divide the bed into thirds and plant every three weeks to extend the harvest, planning on having the peas done and out of the garden by early June.

I’ll run the netting along the centre of my three foot bed, plant the peas on the north side and lettuce on the other side. When the peas are well established, around May 1, I’ll sow beans on the south side of the net and pull out the lettuce as we eat it, but I plan to move the best of each kind of lettuce to the seed saving bed to grow them out for my own seed next year.

I’m beginning to think that reserving a bed just for seed-saving has to be an important fixture in my garden plans. I have a small yard and cannot afford to leave plants in the beds where they grew for the length of time it takes them to go to seed, so I’ll move them to my seed-saving bed. Once seed from the annuals have been harvested, I’ll pull them out and move the biennials into this bed. I read that, when intending to grow roots like beets and carrots out for seed, one should dig them up and store them in a cold place, hoping that half of them survive to be transplanted the following spring when the ground thaws. We should, they say, plan to grow out several of each type in order to have a decent representation, but I don’t have that much room so I plan to save only one of each type and hope for the best.

I don’t plan to store them inside like the authors back east suggest because my roots fare better outside in our milder winters (and I must thank my prescient parents for moving us out here). I’ll dig up each plant I intend to save from its original bed, keeping as much root ball intact with the soil as is practical and transfer the plant to a previously prepared hole in the seed-saving bed. I’m not going to fertilize or water this bed because they should have enough nutrients stored in their roots to carry them through and there should be enough spring rain that they won’t need extra water.

These biennials should be the best of the last batch that are sown, about 70 days before I plan to move them in late September, because younger plants are more resilient and survive winters more successfully than older plants. Kind of like people.

Here are a couple of interesting events happening on Seedy Sunday, March 17 at the Siem Lelum Gym, 5574 River Rd., Duncan.

1. Adapting to Climate Change with Dan Jason. 12:15 p.m.

2. Native Plants with Todd Carnahan, 1:15 p.m. to 2 p.m.

Please contact mary_lowther@yahoo.ca with questions and suggestions since I need all the help I can get.