RAISING PEAS— KITCHEN-GARDEN TALK. 



RAISING PEAS — KITCHEN-GARDEN TALK. 



BY AN OLD DIGGER. 



" This is one of tho.se vegetables," said Cobbett, "which all men most like." You 

 know there is not a tolerable kitchen-garden in all Europe or North America, where peas 

 are not cultivated, so it is worth while to ask a neighbor what are the best sorts, and how 

 to cultivate them? For all peas are not alike — some are dry and in.sipid, while others are 

 tender and sugary. 



Well, there are a dozen or twenty sorts of peas, and you may find half the latter num- 

 ber in almost any large seed store. But many of them are only second rate, and, of 

 course, you waste your garden space in planting second rate sorts. What you do 

 want, is the very best early pea; the best succession pea, and the best late pea. For with 

 these, supposing you plant all three sorts about the same time, they will come in so as to 

 keep your table in peas till August. After that, if you are as fond of peas as I am, you 

 will provide a second crop, or rather a couple of second crops of the early pea, for Sep- 

 tember and the early part of October, by sowing them again about the middle of August. 



For the spring crop, you should commence sowing peas as soon as the frost is out of the 

 ground — even it be the first of March, (or a month earlier at the south,) for peas are not 

 tender chicks, like most other vegetables, being not a whit injured by a few very frosty 

 nights, even when the}' are several inches high. If j'ou have a warm .sheltered piece of 

 ground, on the south side of a fence or building, where you can plant a couple of drills as 

 soon as the ground is mellow, then you will get the start of your neighbors who plant in 

 the open garden — for the pea is easily coaxed forward by keeping the cold winds away 

 from it. But much the best way of raising a very early crop of peas, if you like to get 

 ahead of the season a little, is that described in the Horticulturist, vol. 1., p. 481, which 

 I have tried for several years. I find, fol- 

 lowing out that plan, with very little trou- 

 ble I can gain ten days over most of my 

 neighbors, who have the sharpest garden- 

 ers, if they trust entirely to what can be 

 done in the open air. You tack these 

 troughs loosely together, so that the nails can be easily drawn; you nearly fill them Avith 

 good soil, planting a drill of peas in them, in the usual way, and you set tliem in any 

 rough frame, (without dung or bottom heat.) This you must contrive to cover Avith sash- 

 es of some sort — or if you have no sashes, then with frames covered with cheap cotton, 

 coated over with a little oil, to make it partly transparent. With such a frame, set in a 

 sunny place, and covered with cotton stuff or sashes, you begin to start peas by the mid- 

 dle of February, or, if the season is late, the first of March. When they are about three 

 or four inches high, and the season grows mild, )'ou make a furrow in the kitchen-garden, 

 set the troughs in the farrow: draw the nails; lift out the boards, pressing the earth grad- 

 ually in their place, and then you have peas ready to stick when your earliest planting in 

 the open ground is just breaking through the soil. The peas transplanted from the 

 troughs in this way, don't know that they have been moved at all, and grow on, settling 

 themselves as if they had been sown there, and had a " pre-emption right" to tlie ground. 

 Not mxich needs to be said about the soil for peas. They like a good soil, but the early 

 'ill grow on almost any land that can be dignified with th.e name of a /arden 

 look for rapid growth and good crops, j^our soil must be kept in good heart 



