Growing Gardens

with Anita Morton

Easy peasy

If you're kicking yourself for not getting your sweet peas or edible peas in a month ago, then stop it at once! It's not too late to get excellent growth before the cool weather, and the plants will then be ready to burst into flower in August, and will go on producing for months.

I germinate my pea seeds indoors. Line a dish with several layers of paper towel, spread the seeds out across the surface, cover with more paper towel and then saturate the lot. Leave a standing pool of water in the dish until the seeds have plumped up, then pour off any excess and keep the paper just damp. Put the dish in a warm place indoors and the seeds will sprout in only two days or so.

When most of the seeds have started to put out roots, but before these have grown more than three centimetres, it's time to plant out. You will need to arrange wire netting to support the peas - even the dwarf peas need some help, and taller kinds will easily reach 1.5 metres. The soil for sweet peas and edible peas must be heavily limed. Aim for a pH of around 7, and scatter some sulphate of potash along the planting row as well. Don't go mad with fertiliser - any moderate garden soil will do.

Make a trench 5cm deep and water the soil if it's dry. Gently scatter the sprouted seeds along the trench and cover them with the displaced soil. Don't water at this stage, but wait until you see the shoots emerging. Keep them evenly damp, and mulch along the row when they reach 15cm high. Now we can just stand back and wait, as patiently as possible, for the heavenly scent of the spring flowers, or the no less heavenly peas that follow them.

Lismore Garden Club News

The Lismore Garden Club's May meeting will be held next Thursday, May 5, at the Lismore Workers Club from 1.30pm. The guest speaker will be Stephen Muldoon from the Lismore Orchid Society, who will speak on "orchids in the garden". Visitors are most welcome. The social outing for May will be a morning tea at the home of Alan and Ivy Gray of Lismore. There will be a garden walk in the Gray's lovely garden and visitors are welcome. For further information phone Ron on 6624 7422 or 0421 021 451.

The "kitchen garden" is a valuable asset to any household. It should be located in a sunny spot as close as possible to your kitchen. The kitchen garden can be "no dig" or conventional. The size will depend on the size of your family and what you decide to grow.

All kitchen gardens should include herbs. Do not waste time, money and space by growing every kind of herb - just plant the few herbs that you use regularly. You will also find it very convenient to grow a few vegies in season (say spring and autumn) and have them handy when you need them. Once again, only grow the type and quantity of vegies that you are sure to use. Plant small quantities at regular intervals.

You can grow a few flowers in with the herbs and vegies. Calendulas in autumn/winter and marigolds in spring/summer will help to deter bugs and brighten up the garden.

Finally: A regular dose of gardening does more good than any medicine.

Happy gardening
Ron Burns