Farewell, snow peas

Death-brown adds such a depth to the garden.

At the heart of any good pitch for another crazy garden idea is a decent crop of snow pea. The wife loves the snow pea.

So after kilo upon kilo, month after month since autumn, I sadly called it a day on my winter snow peas yesterday afternoon. I imagine you can see why, the plant only looks marginally better than it would if you'd taken to it with a blowtorch. That's the cancer of the snow pea for you: powdery mildew. It always gets you in the end. That they'd lasted this long wasn't anything to do with careful breeding or great management, more a combination of dry weather and dumb luck.

That trellis isn't much of a design statement,
but it will empower the chickens to do some weeding for me.

So out they came. Sniff, sniff. I'll remember them when I'm cropping pumpkin from the car-port roof next autumn.

In a very token effort to reduce the number mildew spores that can find their way onto my next crop, this is one of the few things I put out as green waste. I guess you could compost it if your heap got hot enough - but that's definitely not a description of my compost - its a bit less like a sauna, and a bit more like tepid bathwater.

Here's some I prepared earlier

Its not a total loss though - I hear the seeds are still good, mildew or none - and there's always a tonne of pods a lazy gardener like me didn't get to quick enough. After a decent amount of drying, they'll be stored well to support the coming year's crazy ideas.