Thursday 30 August 2007

Peaches, peas and mulch



The signature tune for the arrival of Spring in my garden is always the flowering of the stone-fruit and citrus trees - almonds, plums, peaches, apricots, cherries, mandarin, orange, lemon and grapefruit. The peaches are pink (photo) while the rest are largely white, though sometimes tinged with pink or orange and yellow.
This last autumn, I planted the peas at the base of some bamboo tepees that had been used for tomatoes last summer, and that I'd left in place. I wasn't sure how they'd stand up, as peas have tiny grasping tendrils, and can't get a grip on a bamboo pole in the same way beans can - by wrapping around it.
Fortunately, with all the pea-straw mulch I'm laying down to hold my winter soil water, I'd plenty of baling twine left over. So Claudia kindly tied some lengths of this tough blue twine horizontally between the bamboos, and the peas are starting to grasp onto them. So now, when the gully winds come, or the great weight of peas I'm hoping for arrives, they won't collapse.
Plenty of other things are flowering too, particularly the radish, kohl rabi and Asian brassicas such as pak choy.

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