Peas finally!

I've been wanting to do a blog about my lousy pea harvest this year.  I've been extremely upset at the small amount of peas I've harvested, sure that last year it was much better and these two types of peas must be horrid for the IL garden.  This year I planted Dakota and Serge, while last year I had Lincoln and Knight.  Same amount of space - 16 square feet.  Up to now I'd only gotten a tiny bit of peas - not more than 5oz of shelled peas at most.  For shame!  And the ones still on the vine didn't seem to be plumping up either.

I was intent on letting people know about this year's experiment and how it paled in comparison to last year's.  Ha!  How wrong I was! 

This morning, before blogging about it, I decided I had to harvest and then go back to last year's records in order to check my memory - and get the exact stats on last year's harvest.  This morning I harvested a lot actually:

One pound and 10 oz of peas in the shell, amounting to 10 oz of shelled peas!  Well, guess what, last year by June 25 I had only harvested 7 oz of shelled peas.  This year, by June 22, I had harvested about 15 oz!  Obviously my memory of last year's garden isn't to be relied on.  It's a good thing I keep detailed notes.  That's the value of record keeping - I've found that no matter how sure I am of remembering how good or bad the harvest was, I never really can remember.

Here is my setup: peach tea, scale, and basket of peas waiting to be shelled, with my handy harvest record notebook at the ready...

Last year I was finished with the pea harvest July 11 and I had harvested 1 pound and 5 oz total.  This year, it seems, Serge and Dakota are giving Lincoln and Knight a run for their money...we'll see how it actually turns out, using facts instead of my memory!