How to plant peas in your square foot garden...

First of all, It's good to have a nice reference book.  

You can see the back of the book is arranged by vegetable type. 

I flipped open to the peas.

Then I soaked all of the peas.  ALL OF THEM. Duh.  Spring and fall's peas.  I ended up giving the rest to my sister-in-law.  

And then I went out to my square foot garden and placed the seeds in the soil.

And covered them up.

And it's looking pretty good! The rock on the lower right side is covering a vole hole. We added mole/vole bait that will break down into a garden friendly substance and sorry but the name escapes me right now. Those little critters are like mice/moles and they think my garden is their playground, and my lawn, and my window wells -gravel inches deep doesn't even bother them.

The peas are planted and good thing too because I just used the last of them in my parrot's food.

How does your Garlic grow?

Garlic - it's super easy to grow and if you haven't tried it and want to, you should. And deer hate it.  They stay out of my garden they hate it so much.

This year (or rather last fall when I planted it) my garlic is in a row.  I planted all of these from the garlic I grew last year.  You really only have to buy garlic once if you plant enough to collect a few large pieces off of them for the next planting. I have a row garden when square foot gardens are all the rage.  But guess what? My dad brought me all the stuff to make a 3x10 foot square foot garden this year.  I'll tell you about it later. Anyway, back to the GARLIC ... it's awesome.  Just stick a clove in the ground.  Make sure it gets watered well in the fall.  And then here you go.  It sprouts in the spring and then when it starts turning brown in August, pull it up. You can braid it together or cut off the tops and let it dry. The hard neck kind stores really well, almost a year.  And even though powdered dried garlic upsets my tummy, fresh minced garlic does not. 

Improving the Garden and the Environment

We purchased 3 cubic yards of compost from Millers weighing about 1,000 lbs/yd. It took two trips to get it.  It was only $15/yd which is nice on the budget.  I also found out Millers has a prepared mix ready for Square Foot gardens.  They've already had the soil tested and made sure that the Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium levels are where they should be. Which makes me happy because my Dad is making an awesome 10x2 foot square foot garden for me out of galvanized steel.  Buying or making compost is good for the environment.  We don't have mature trees or even enough grass clippings to make our own yet so we purchased it.  And it's really helped the soil.  Not only is it rich and produces beautiful vegetables (my cornstalks triple in width when I apply it) but it also makes room in the soil for air and water.  We have some seriously dense clay here.

It's been a cold wet spring here.  You can see all the snow on the mountains in the background.  In fact it snowed last week and I'm pretty sure we'll have snow in May too.  Although we'd welcome rain instead.  They, whoever they are, are worried about flooding this year.  I guess there are two borderline rivers here in our valley.  We live up on a foothill so we won't have to worry too much.

It is nice to have this garlic sprouting.  You have to plant it in October.  And I put the wire panel up to keep the tiller out.  After it gets tilled, I'll move it to the other end of the garden so I can plant the peas and trellis them on it.  I'm buying my own mini tiller this year for sure.  I talked Tyler into letting me use the money from my last class to buy one.  I just don't have the energy to weed by hand anymore.