The Pea Massacre of June 16th (a delayed entry)

Yes, it is as bad as it sounds. I went out to the farm today. There was volunteer that offered to help me on the field. My plan was to weed the peas and put up the pea trellis. I gave her a stirrup hoe, demonstrated how to use it and emphasized avoiding the drip tape. I worked at the other end of the row with the wheel hoe where the weeds were much thicker. Half an hour later we began examining where to put stakes for trellis. I then saw a few peas that had been cut by the stirrup hoe. Then I looked down the row and saw that all the peas were cut... I had not shown her what a pea plant looked like. About 75% of the pea plants were dead.

The trellis was another disaster. It was so tangled in one spot that we had to cut it. But the bottom string is cut (or chewed?) through in some places making the trellis ineffective until you get up 2ft or so. I ended up not securing the trellis (it is strung around the posts up to the point where we had to cut it) because I didn't want to invest any more time in it with the likely possibility that we would have to take it down and redo it. There is some hog fence that could be used but it won't go the whole lenth of the field. Any other ideas?


One last sad thing- some animal (vole? ground squirrel?) ate a bunch of the pumpkin seeds in the flats. I'd say it ate about 1/2 of the seeds planted. There are still some in the flats, but none have germinated. Oh and some little critter seems to really like the red cabbage out in the field- it selectively munched on every plant.

One positive thing: the brassicas were transplanted into 2 inch blocks today. So, as far as I know, nothing needs to be transplanted in the greenhouse (into larger blocks).

Soon I think Linda would like help transplanting basil (into the field) and spearmint (into the metal tub outside greenhouse). Positives: The spearmint looks really great. And our field is almost full.

(Pea update: Alex replanted peas so it's still possible that we'll get more that 10 pea pods each.)