Hi Nick - I have a bunch of heirloom tomatoes and would like to trade for your calendula. Could I send you my list? Doreen.

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. We have a brand new member of the household and it seems diapers and feedings take precedence over all else. I also had to learn how to post pics. Tansymoon, I don't know if you can bring a cattle panel home in a van. The ones I bought were 52 inches wide by 16 feet long. The store had a policy against loading 16 foot long items into a pick up bed (good call) so I had to bring a trailer. I bought mine at a local lumber yard called Lumber 2. They were also available at Atwood's Farm and Home, and Tractor Supply Company, as well as several local farm stores. Farfaraway, Yes, you can tuck the arch inside the frame of a raised bed, and I'd encourage it. I mentioned that I placed mine using railroad ties. I tried eliminating this step on one pair of arches and was sorry. Because the railroad ties were not there, when I pulled down to create the curve of the arch, the curve came in lower on the arch than was pleasing to my eye. (If someone will tell me how I can tell you to look at my photobucket, the misproportioned arch is there.) I dont' recommend using the roll of fencing for this application, although you can probably do other styles of trellis that would look quite nice. I don't believe the roll of fencing will be stiff enough to hold its shape. I think planting cool weather lettuce and spinach under the cover of peas will probably extend their growing season as things warm up. I haven't actually grown peas, just cukes on the trellis last summer, but peas were my (now unlikely) plan before we were blessed with diapers and feedings. I did not pull them out, because they were attractive as winter interest with white lights and later with icicles. Also, they marked the openings to my woodland paths, so I'm thinking they are semi permanent. My only casualty came from a tree crashing on one during our unprecedented December ice storm. The picture below shows two cattle panels together. After folding, but before bending, I tied them together with green plastic coated gardening twist tie stuff. With two together each side was 104" long. You can see the start of a couple of purple hyacinth beans at the front side. In addition, I planted 25 cukes along each side, one about every four inches. The cukes dangled inside the arch, which made for easy picking. The deer and racoons will vouch for that statement. "> My apologies that the photo is sideways and too big. The editing software at photobucket doesn't seem to like me. I played with it for two hours and it's time to move on.

i tried Sugar Sprint this year which is smaller and not as delicious as Super Sugar Snap but is only about 2 or 3 feet tall and stringless. i like to let SSS get really fat before harvest, is it just me or do they seem to get sweeter that way? The pods must be strung at any age but it is so much easier to string a fresh pea. queenofthemountain, did you get to taste any of the Sugar Snaps to compare to Super Sugar Snap? i have heard others say the taste is better? But also what your experience confirms, no resistance to PM. i was suprised to discover that snap peas come in yellow and purple. i know Sylvia grew some Golden Sweet snow peas recently and i just received some Opal Creek and Sugar Magnolia seeds. Anyone else trying any of the colored podded peas?

Susan, Glad you finally got a pea to taste. I use innoculants sporadically but not often. I'll use one if I am planting peas or beans in an area where no legumes have been grown in recent years. Otherwise, the rhizobia tends to be there in the soil already. Whether to freeze or refrigerate the seed is your choice. I don't do it because of space considerations. If you do choose to keep it in a freezer or refrigerator, be sure it is in an air-tight container. I have found that all home-grown peas are infinitely better than any you buy at the store---there is no comparison between the two. That's why I grow so many veggies---because fresh, locally-grown veggies taste like veggies. The produce purchased at the grocery store is grown long distances away and shipped so it is several days old by the time you get it and the quality (and nutrient content) decreases every day. Sometimes you can find snap peas at Farmer's Markets that really are locally grown and fresh, but even they tend not to be quite as fresh and tasty as home-grown. They show general heat stress....browning, yellowing or fading of the leaves' normally lovely color. They stop blooming or the blooms stop forming into peas. The plants can go from looking pretty good to looking pretty bad practically overnight when the heat arrives. You do have to plant a lot of seed/plants to get an appreciable amount of peas. I plant 4 packets of seed in the spring and 4 packets in the fall in order to grow all we can eat fresh and have plenty left over to freeze and I tend to plant tall types that get 5' to 8' tall because they produce more peas per square foot for me than dwarf peas. I have found freshly-picked and freshly-frozen sugar snap peas are tastier than frozen sugar snap peas purchased at the grocery store. In a good season (and good is relative because we usually get too hot too early in spring and stay too hot too late in fall), I expect 20-40 lbs. of peas from my long pea bed. Tim and I eat all we get and could eat more if I could grow more, but even in our large garden, there's only so much space I'll give to something whose production is 'iffy'. Some years it gets very hot very early and we get nothing. That's a risk you face in planting many of the cool-season crops in a region like ours where the cool season can be incredibly brief. Peas are interesting. Even the ones touted as 'mildew-resistant' sometimes get PM and some of the ones not touted as 'mildew-resistant' seem to be quite resistant any way. When the taller ones yield well, they yield incredibly well. I've never been as happy with the yield on the small ones....and I give the smaller ones a 3' tall chicken-wire trellis to climb anyway. I feel like they do better when they have something other than each other to climb. For the fall, sow your seed in mid-August to early September and expect to begin harvesting, more or less, two months after the peas sprout. It is very weather dependant. For other fall planting dates and row spacing, etc. I've linked the OSU Fall Planting Guide. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Fall Gardening Guide