2012-07-30 The Great Pea Takeover

Post date: Jul 30, 2012 4:11:28 PM

In case you hadn’t noticed... the gardens have been growing quite a bit, getting very dense and green! If you take a look at photos from the past month, you will definitely notice this. If you take a close enough look at the photos, you will soon realize that most of this growth and green is due to the pea plants in the garden. Not so impressive, right??

If you think back to the end of June, I told you that Tracy had planted the peas in order to help with nitrogen fixation for the gardens while the plants focus on growing. The peas have grown fabulously, but there are a few problems with this. They have nothing to really wrap around and hold onto as they grow, so they have mostly been wrapping around other plants in the garden and climbing around them. This has also created some problems for sunlight, as they were growing over most of the plants so they were “stealing”the sun from the smaller plants that need it.

Solution, courtesy of Dustin: trim the pea plants so they are not taking over the garden, but so that they can still fix nitrogen into the soil. Whatever is cut off can then by cut into smaller pieces and laid on bare soil, creating a ground cover that keeps moisture in the soil and that will soon decompose and provide nutrients for the gardens! Great idea!

This morning I went and completed the job of trimming all the peas – what a task! Most of the leftovers were placed on the soil, while a bit was reserved for the worms of the vermicompost bin on the East balcony. The gardens now look a bit better! I can see many more of our native species now that they are not covered and strangled by all the peas. I can’t wait to see the difference in a few days, when the plants will have a chance to get some more sun!