The Modern Victory Garden

The pea pods were at their optimum size this week, so I determined that today would be largely devoted to the process of harvesting and preserving the shelled garden peas.   You may recall that the pea patch was quite thick and loaded with mature pods.   Here's a picture of it from just a few days ago.                     

I got started with the project at about 10 am this morning.   The first order of business was to assess whether the plants should remain in place longer to produce additional harvests.   After looking at the patch carefully, I determined that 1) virtually all the pods were mature and ready to pick; 2) there were no blooms on the plants indicating a potential second harvest was forthcoming; and 3) I really need this bed opened up to plant some of the fall crops.   With that in mind, I got the harvest underway -  doing so by pulling each plant and then stripping it of pea pods.   The vines were then piled up and later placed in the compost pile.   This made the job go much more quickly than it would have otherwise, but it was still a rather lengthy undertaking.   To make it a more comfortable task, I got started before the sun started hitting that section of the garden (so I was in shade), and I used a step stool to sit on to spare my knees and back.                            

I used a 5-gallon bucket to put the pods into.   Working counter clockwise, I moved around the bed and harvested the peas while also removing the vines.   By the time I was on the last section, the sun was hitting me full strength and it was getting quite hot.        

The garden bed that held the pea patch measures 4'X12'.   I used my horizontal pea trellis creation for the first time and it was a resounding success!   I harvested considerably more peas this year than last year - probably 3 times as many in fact.   This bed provided an almost full bucket of peas, which weighed in at 14.5 lbs (excluding the bucket's weight of 1.5lbs). 

The pea patch was completely stripped of peas and all of the debris was carried off to the compost pile.                                   

I then took down the horizontal trellis, rolling the netting up and stacking the supports and bamboo poles together in the shop so they would be ready for next year's use.   This bed is now ready to be prepped for planting up fall crops.                  

The sun was getting quite fierce by that point in the afternoon so it was a relief to retire into the coolness of the house to shell the peas.   My husband, daughter, and I watched the movie "Iron Man" and worked together to shell the peas.   It took almost the whole movie and all three of us working at it to get them all done.   The result is an impressively big mixing bowl of fresh garden peas.  This is over 6.5 lbs of peas.              

These were then blanched for 90 seconds and then bagged up in gallon zip lock freezer bags - three of them at two pounds per bag.   About a half pound was held out in a bowl to be used for tonight's dinner.   I used the same process to blanch these as I previously described for freezing spinach.                          

These were put in the freezer laid out flat. This encourages the peas to freeze so that they are not clumped together.   This makes it easy to open a bag and scoop out just what you need - then you can reseal and put it back in the freezer.                                              

While the big pea patch is now history, it certainly is not the end of fresh pea harvests for this Modern Victory Garden!   Coming along nicely are the sugar snap peas ("Cascadia"), which will provide lots of fresh pea harvests for weeks to come.                                    

I hope you are having a good (and safe) Fourth of July weekend so far.