The MINI kitchen garden grows in height

There is not much mini over today's planting in the mini kitchen garden.

The spinach that grew in the outer rows has been harvested, and there is now just enough space to set up the pea racks where the spinach stood. This is an old Danish heritage variety called Grams Høje Ært, which for obvious reasons is not suitable for today's efficient commercial production methods, where the peas are harvested by machine: the pea plants become approx. 3 meters high and harvested using a stepladder.

One could of course have sown or planted a more common garden variety of about a meter, but the advantage of Grams is that they (in addition to being both large and sweet) remain fresh and crisp for a longer time on the plant, where most others varieties quickly become floury if you do not just get them picked.

The peas were sown in root trainers a few weeks ago, and now have so much root that they are suitable for transplanting. At the same time, the plants are so large that they are no longer interesting to the garden pigeons, whereas a pigeon pair can clear a newly sprouted pea bed in one morning. And finally, pre-cultivation means getting rid of any annoying gaps in the rows. The peas can be sown with 2 seeds per cell, which are then transplanted together without separating the plants. They are connected on both sides of the fence, so that you end up with about 20 plants per meter. The lettuce plants can simply continue to be harvested as needed, and as space becomes available between the tall peas, pre-cultivated beets should be planted out.

Written by Peter Norris, May 20, 2018