Before the peas were able to be direct seeded into the ground there was a lot of work to do to get the rows ready to plant. The rows used to be used for tomato plants so the polls for the trellis were already installed. We has to clear out all the dead plants and weeds to be able to string up the new string that the peas would use to grow on. This was a lot harder than it sounded. The rows contained a lot of Bermuda grass which is a invasive species of grass that is close to impossible to get rid of completely. It took over two hours to get rid of the grasses, weeds, and dead plants. We than had to build the mounds of rows back up so that we would have the rows to plant on. Than we put mulch over all the rows and walk ways to suppress the weeds. Adding the mulch over the soil only has to be done once in the life of the crop. By doing this I was able to keep the weeds under a manageable growth rate. When they started popping up I was able to hand weed and get rid of them right away. The maintaining of the rows was easy. It was the initial work that was tuff, but it was worth it to do get all the weeds in the early stage so that in the future I did not have to do as much tedious work.
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I selected my two pea varieties from Johnny's selected seeds. These included Sugar Sprint in three of my pea rows and Penelope in two of the rows. The Sugar Sprint are a variety of snap peas and should be ready to harvest within 58 days. This variety only has a 89% germination rate. This is lower than the Penelope seeds, but I wanted to get a shelled and snap pea to compare. The Penelope variety was indeed a shelled pea with a 94% germination rate with a 59 day from plant to harvest. Before planting the seeds straight into the ground we treated the seeds by soaking the seeds in water for six hours. Volunteers helped direct seed the peas into the rows on 10/22/18.
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AuthorI am the loudest, the proudest, member of the Fighting Aggie class of 2019 Whoop! I am from Garland, Tx and a Horticulture major. Come visit me at the farm and ask me about plants! Archives |
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