Harvest of seeds and sowing in the summer heat

The peas are long overdue, but not all of them have been eaten. Seeds must also be harvested for next year's sowing. Grams High Pea can be hard to find for sale, but luckily it is quite easy to harvest its own seeds. On top of that, the germination percentage for such home-harvested seeds is often higher than for the seeds you buy from the seed companies.

When the plants began to develop pods, elastic was put around the specimens that were selected for this year's seed harvest. The elastic also served as a protection against people (or the garden's guests) completely inadvertently eating them. When the pods are dry as parchment and the peas are rattling around inside like a rattle, it is time for harvest. The wrinkled peas are placed in a bowl on the windowsill for a few days until completely dry, and then stored dry and cool in a paper bag.

When the dry pea plants are removed, there will be free space in the bed together with the beets. According to the plan, spinach should now be sown for autumn harvest, but spinach seeds only have the problem that they germinate poorly if the soil temperature is above 20 ° - and in a sunny bed in a hot summer, the temperature in the soil easily rises above 30 °. So there has been sowing in the evening, the water in the groove with cold water, and put tarpaulin over to shade from the sun. Thereafter, the ground has subsequently been sprinkled morning and evening. Still, it is doubtful whether the germination will succeed in the middle of a heat wave, so it may be necessary to sow at the end of the week, where rain and more normal temperatures are forecast.

In the bed of cucumber and bar beans, there are now fine little cucumbers, while the beans do not behave quite as planned. It is as if the beans develop faster here in the heath than the plants themselves can keep up with. Actually, the bean plants should wind up on the stems and be firmly in place before beans are developed - but here the beans are planted so early that they weigh down the tip of the plant so that it cannot grab the stalk. Which I have never experienced before, so I have to step in with help with tying thread in between.

Written by Peter Norris, on 6.8.2018