February is still a long way off from the main vegetable-growing season, but there is a lot that can be done in the garden.
It usually pays to make at least two sowings of peas in February – one in the middle of the month and one towards the end. Peas are not the easiest crop to grow, but they are one of the most valuable. It is impossible to buy peas in the shop, or from the market – either fresh or frozen – that match fresh peas from the garden.
Peas sown early in the year produce a crop in early Summer, before insect pests have become established, and are therefore often better yielding than later sowings. A smooth-skinned variety should be selected – study the seed box carefully to ensure that February sowings are advised. Last year, I bought a dwarf variety by mistake; it never grew to more than twelve inches high and, cosequently, had no need for supporting pea sticks. I was happily surprised by the results and will repeat the experiment again this year (alongside a more traditional variety).
The first big problem with peas is trying to ensure that mice do not eat them before, or just after, they germinate. For many years, I have protected my peas with plastic bottles cut into rings – one ring per pea seed. With this method, I enjoyed eighty or ninety per cent success (which saved a lot of money on seed), but last year something, presumably mice, found a way of getting round the defences and I lost seventy per cent of the tiny seedlings within a day or two of them emerging above the soil. The problem was resolved by retaining the plastic bottles, but covering them over with fleece until the seedlings were four or five inches high.
The next problem is wood pigeons, which were particularly bad in my garden last year – they ate the tops off the plants faster than they could grow, so that after a month the plants were still no more than a few inches high. This problem was overcome by hanging old CDs from the pea sticks.
This may sound like a lot of work, but once the plants have reached a reasonable size, they more or less look after themselves, and all that you have to do is enjoy the crop.
