I had to do some maintenance on the garden recently. My snap pea vines have grown much taller than the 3 feet advertised on the seed packet. It’s only mildly problematic.
I took some of the long strips of redwood left over from my trellis project and wove them vertically through the chickenwire fence where the peas are climbing. I tied a length of gardening twine between the strips about a foot from the top of the fence and then trained the gangly vines onto the twine. You can barely make out the redwood strips over to the far right of my webcam image. My only worry is that these tall vines are going to block the sun from my tomato plants, which are right next to the peas. I think the ‘maters are big enough now that I don’t have cause for concern, but those babies sure do love all the sunshine they can get!
When Ava gets home from daycare, I love to take her back to the garden so we can look at what’s new. Her first taste of the plot was a delicious, mild green bean that she chomped right through with gusto. Last evening, I picked a snap pea for her, rubbed it off a bit, and handed it to her. It was great to walk around the edge of our tiny garden with Ava on my shoulders (so she could see over the peas), pointing out all the vegetables that’re coming up while she crunched on her nice fresh pea pod.
My dad likes to tell the story of how my brother and I, in our younger years, would snap off stalks of asparagus from my mom’s garden for a snack on our way down to the woods behind our house (much to my mother’s consternation). We had a huge garden full of all manner of vegetables. Now that I have my own little spot, I’m amazed that my parents had the time to tend such a massive space. Obviously, though, eating all the vegetables was not much of a problem. It was keeping them on the vine long enough to ripen that was difficult.