Fava Beans and Sugar Snaps in the ground
When I walked out into the parking lot after work yesterday, a flock of robins landed in the grass and the wind had slowed to a breeze. I smelled spring on the air, warm and tufted. I knew just what I would do the minute I got home. After I dropped my bags inside, I squeezed into my work jeans (which I couldn’t comfortably button thanks to all of the cupcake recipes I’ve been testing in recent months, coupled with a sedentary lifestyle spent mostly in front of a computer). As I tied my shoes, Chris and Lila came in from school pickup and her cheeks were rosy red and the balmy smell of outdoors rolled off of her in warm waves.
I asked her if she knew what I was about to do and she threw her arms up in the air and shouted, “Play outside!”
“Yes! And guess what else?!” She stared at me with her mouth ajar, her face transparent in its wonder of what could possibly be more fantastic than playing outside right this minute. “I’m going to plant the peas and the Fava beans!”
And she was all geared up to help as we carried out the box with seed packs and an envelope of inoculant, a bottle of water and an empty container in which to mix the seeds with the black powder. But the minute we came around the back of the house, she spotted David and Fatou out in the cul-de-sac and they came running like the wind to the swing set. David started pumping, laughing and said, “Here we are! We’re all together again!” and the girls nodded wisely. Then he said, “Let’s play together this year and not fight. We’re bigger now.”
!!!
Their conversation turned over and over the facts of their long, lonely winter spent indoors because their parents don’t like the cold. “And that’s silly because cold is fun. It has snow and icicles and sledding and hot chocolate.”
When did we all become such wimps?
Their mothers came too, and I chatted for a moment, but then excused myself to the other side of the yard where I raked leaves off of last year’s carrot bed and drew a few trenches in the cold, but mostly dry soil then dropped the dusted Fava bean seeds in and patted the soil back over them. My first dirt manicure of the season. Then I raked some of the leaves off of the garlic bed I planted over here so the stalks can get a bit more sun and the bed can warm up more. I’ll mulch back around them in a few weeks again to keep the weeds down.
After the kids went home, I wound my way through the woods that isn’t much of a woods anymore, to the beds next door where I saw the full-frontal assault of how sick I got last autumn. I never finished putting the garden to bed, and the tomato trellis had crumbled in on itself and listed to the north wildly. Chris helped me to take it apart and move all of the bamboo poles into a pile. Then I raked out the bed closest to Carol’s house and Lila and I planted more Fava beans (finishing the packet) and an entire pack of Amish Sugar Snaps.
I am ecstatic. For the first time ever, I managed to get peas in the ground before May! I’ll do another bed of sugar snaps, and some shelling peas, and some more of those phenomenal dwarf gray snow peas. Then some spinach and salad greens.
The bigger garlic bed next door is looking mighty awesome with its light green sprouts sticking up four inches. My mouth is already watering at the thought of all of those garlic scapes curling back towards the earth, and then chopped and tossed with butter and parmesan on pasta. Mmmmm.
I’m going to have to start employing that crockpot over the next few months during planting season, so we can come home to dinner mostly ready, then just head outside. There’s so much work to do and just taking these first few steps last night filled me with such joy that I floated through dinner prep, my feet hovering a few inches above the dirty linoleum floor.
I didn’t take any pictures because time flew and our tummys growled wildly, but I’ll leave you with this image from a little over a week ago. Hard to believe we had almost two feet of snow out there just moments ago and I must remind myself that it’s more than possible that we will have that again before we’re finished with winter for this year.
Not that these two nutbags would believe it.
"In summer we live out of doors, and have only impulses and feelings, which are all for action, and must wait commonly for the stillness and longer nights of autumn and winter before any thought will subside; we are sensible that behind the rustling leaves, and the stacks of grain, and the bare clusters of the grape, there is the field of a wholly new life, which no man has lived; that even this earth was made for more mysterious and nobler inhabitants than men and women. In the hues of October sunsets, we see the portals to other mansions than those which we occupy."
~Henry David Thoreau
March 27th, 2008 at 6:21 am
Exciting! I hope to get my favas planted tomorrow… maybe I can convince one of my “nephews” to help, too.
Good luck with the rest of the cleanup… I’ll think of you in sympathy whenever I get around to turning the compost.
March 27th, 2008 at 6:43 am
What a great post ! .. it was like a short story to me. We have a great deal more snow still .. what a funny picture .. that is priceless : )
Good luck with the clean up .. maybe by the end of next month I will be able to do the same thing ?
Joy
March 27th, 2008 at 7:33 am
good luck with getting that help, Jennifer. Lila and I had so much fun dropping seeds in the trenches and patting them in. She found some weird blob in the dirt and held it out to me for help identifying…I was too far away and just guessed…it’s a sleeping slug. She dropped it with such a look of disgust. Then asked repeatedly if I was sure it was a slug and why was it sleeping…so I picked it up. Not a slug. An empty shell of potato from last year! Too fun.
Turning compost? People do that?!
March 27th, 2008 at 7:34 am
Joy, thanks for your kind words! We’re supposed to have rain today, turning to snow overnight, with several inches possible. Harrumph.
March 27th, 2008 at 8:02 am
Hooray for you! Can hear the joy all these miles away! Dying to get outside myself.
Love that picture of Chris and Lila! A classic! The child in Chris is alive and well. Bravo for him!
March 27th, 2008 at 9:20 am
Oh spring! We are a long ways from planting yet, though the chickens are enjoying a good romp in the sleeping garden!
The garlic sounds delicious! I’m going to check out growing garlic. Any tips?
March 27th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
oooh, exciting! Even if you do get another two feet of snow, winter is officially OVER ’cause you got your peas in!
March 27th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
Good for you, Kelly! Drats, though, I still have snow
keep up the good work and remember how good it makes you feel, feet hovering above the dirty linoleum and all.
March 27th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
Oh, how I love garlic scapes. I add them to everything-but I can’t wait to try your version. Yet another reason to pour on the nutritional yeast! They say, it always snows 2 more times after the forsythia blooms. So they say! It will rows of lettuce and kale around here soon.
March 27th, 2008 at 7:54 pm
so glad you got everything in, my friend! life has been so complicated here that I haven’t been able to think about the garden. May I should and it will re-center me.
Wintry mix expected tonight: rain to snow and sleet and ice. But there is a promise of spring. The robins and the goldfinches are sure about that.
xoxo
March 28th, 2008 at 11:29 am
I am so envious!! Well, we move this week-end and so I should be able to plant something in a couple of weeks. I am so impatient to get in the dirt!! So much has to happen in such a short period of time.
But I am so happy you got out there and got such great things planted!
March 28th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
Ah home grown peas theres nothing like it. We have 4 varieties in now, two shelled, a sugar snap and a mange tout. Broad beans have been sown successionally since December, French beans to be sown this week and Runner beans the end of April. All bodes well as long as the barricades to keep out the cats and chickens hold up! Did you know if you have pea seeds left over you can broadcast sow them, when about 10cm tall snip them and add to salads .. delicous and beautiful with all those elegant tendrils.
Thanks to the polytunnel we are already munching spring greens, salads and beetroots.
March 30th, 2008 at 5:42 pm
I recently stumbled across your blog and could not stop reading! I LOVED the pictures, your witty writings, and the recipes (all of which I plan on trying out, BTW). Now I am thoroughly hooked on your blog.
I couldn’t get over the fact that you have snow. It is t-shirt weather here in southern Georgia — our garden is planted and our chickens are happily muching on passing insects.
Blessings to you!
Lacy
March 30th, 2008 at 7:48 pm
got the peas in today!! will ty to plant more later in the week if we don’t get the deluge that is expected. I just came in from putting the chickens in——–peepers!!!!!! Spring really is here.
April 1st, 2008 at 5:17 am
Hey there, 6P. Garlic is so easy to grow. Just don’t plant the garlic you buy in the grocery store, it’s been treated to not sprout (and is never very good to begin with). I get seed garlic from a local farmer, and there may be someone selling it near you, but you can also buy seed garlic online and in most seed catalogs now…particularly the heirloom seed catalogs.
It gets planted in the fall so it has a chance to establish a sprout and a bit of a root system before the ground freezes, in rows about a foot apart, individual cloves set point up about 4-5″ in rich, loose soil. They like a mulch for winter (chopped leaves and straw works well), and then I also keep them mulched during the growing season to keep down weeds. Harvest mid-late summer.
google ‘growing garlic’ and you’ll come up with plenty of great info. Good luck!
April 1st, 2008 at 5:20 am
Oh, Rebecca…you drive home again the point that I must get the hoop house or a polytunnel up this year!
I’m going to have to try that pea sprouts in the salad trick. Does that work with any variety of peas? We have one pack of shelling peas left from two years ago that I didn’t much like the results of, but maybe they’ll be incredible in a salad. Thanks for the suggestion!
April 1st, 2008 at 5:23 am
Hi Lacy, thank you so much for stopping by and for your most kind words. I’m so glad you’re going to try some of the recipes (many of them found on other blogs!)
I’m envious of your earlier spring, but here I am on the northern edge of the Northeast, the beginning of the Midwest. Winter stays long past her welcome around here. But thunderstorms and 60º this morning at 6am…so there’s hope!
April 1st, 2008 at 5:23 am
yay, Debra! Hope planting helped ground you a bit. Will try to give you a call today! we need to have lunch…xoxo
April 1st, 2008 at 5:58 am
My husband grew up in the northern portion of the midwest (Illinois) and I couldn’t get over the wind when we visited there in winter. It was January and ice (sandy stuff) was carried in the wind — turning them into stinging pellets which pounded everything. My face actually burned from it.
While I miss the snow… I really don’t like any of the other weather that one must endure to earn the stuff. I see snow as nature’s way of paying you back for putting up with chilblains and frozen water troughs. Perhaps I have become a little wimpy now that I think of it.
We had wild garlic growing in the fields around the home I grew up in. Our neighbors told us that it ruined the milk from their family cow and so I never thought about growing it in my garden until a few years ago. What a delight! I grew it in containers — not wanting it to spread everywhere and found it to be very easy-going. Even with our mild winters — it grew quite well and was very flavorful. I confess that I bragged a bit when company came over and I could inform them that EVEN the garlic was grown in my little garden!
Eagerly awaiting your next installment,
Lacy
April 1st, 2008 at 12:55 pm
Lacy, I’ve heard that about garlic and milk. Yuck-o!
April 20th, 2008 at 7:58 am
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