Growing your own - is it worth it?

[umslopogaas]

ff, have you checked that the ones that havent germinated havent been eaten by mice? Mice love peas.

doversoul, this is a bit of a mystery. Like ff, mine ('Kelvedon Wonder') are just starting to flower, though they arent even eighteen inches high, more like a foot. A two foot variety will not suddenly go to five feet, though there are tall varieties that do: mostly 'old fashioned', since the modern trend is to grow shorter ones that dont need so much support. All I can suggest is a mix-up with the seed. But have patience, I am sure that they will produce peas ... lots of them!

[french frank]

ff, have you checked that the ones that havent germinated havent been eaten by mice? Mice love peas.

Funny that it's the same 'end of row', both rows, and to have been eaten twice (very urban here - do rats eat peas too? ). I think mine were Kelvedon Wonder but I don't have the original packet (I ate the dried ones that weren't used the first year - pea and ham soup, v tasty).

[umslopogaas]

If its the ends of the rows, that does suggest something like a rat is crawling out of somewhere at night and, being timid, would tend to snaffle the ones at the end rather than venture into the middle. Could be rats, they eat anything. In my case it was field mice coming out of the hedge. Try setting some traps, I caught lots when I used peanut butter as bait, its much better than cheese. I used 'The Big Cheese' snap traps from Homebase.

[Dave2002]

I used 'The Big Cheese' snap traps from Homebase.

Are they the circular ones which trap the mouse inside?

I gave up on that sort after a few problems. I wasn't actually sure how they killed the mouse either - poison (from the bait), some sort of spring, or simply starvation.
I tried the "humane" sort too, but it was a pain having to release the mice miles away. I'm afraid in the end I resorted to good old Little Nippers, which I assume kill quickly enough for most that can't escape, though some leave their tails behind. Maybe the Little Nippers don't work so well outside, and could cause problems with birds and pets. Similar considerations might apply to poison, and I have been reluctant to deploy poison anywhere, though a few years ago when we seemed to have problems I bought some rat and mouse poison, which I kept in the garage attached to the house. I never deployed it, but the mice/rats must have found it anyway, as later I discovered that most of it had gone. There was a horrible smell from somewhere under the floorboards for a while (I'd have cleared it out if I could have got in there easily) presumably from one or more mice which had gone up by the hot water pipes to die, which went away eventually, and since then the mice incidence seems to have gone down somewhat, and I've not caught any for quite some time.

Dealing with them outdoors may be different, though.

[umslopogaas]

'The Big Cheese' are spring-loaded break-back traps, similar, I guess to 'Little Nipper'. Apart from the spring they are made of plastic and seem to work fine in the veg patch. They would be a problem for pets, but I dont have any.

I also have a couple of 'Havahart' wire cage traps, made in USA where I guess they trap chipmunks and the like. I have used them successfully to trap squirrels and I think they would trap rats, but mice might be a bit too light to trigger the drop doors. Having caught the beast humanely there is then the problem of disposing of it humanely. Drowning is not approved, the RHS advice is either shoot it, or release it into a sack and whack the sack with a piece of two by four.

[Dave2002]

I believe that squirrel traps are available which do "the whole job" - or at least 90% of it. We have a friend who deploys these to reduce squirrel damage to trees, and she apparently dumps the bodies at the end of her garden - that's the one thing the traps don't do. The bodies are never there the following day

[doversoul1]

After a few nights of heavy rain and a few days of warm sunshine, my peas have grown another several inches but they now have some flowers!!

I gave up sowing peas in the ground long ago. Slugs, mice, and birds, or seeds simply rotted in the ground. I now start them in a plastic gutter filled with seed compost. I let them germinate (almost 100% germination) in the greenhouse, take them out to harden when they are no longer shoots. When they are large enough to handle, I dig a trench, fill it with horse manure, put the soil back and slide the whole thing out from the gutter onto the ground.

This is an ideal method in theory if you can plan them out as soon as they are ready but in practice, weather is often wrong or life gets in the way etc., and they become pot bound very quickly. This year, however, I managed to catch them just right and the weather has been very good. Maybe this has made them turned into near Triffids. I may need a stepladder to harvest.

[umslopogaas]

doversoul, I have the same problems with peas, particularly mice. I've read about the plastic gutter method in the RHS veg book, but never tried it. I grow them in plastic plug trays in the greenhouse until they are big enough that the mice wont be bothered with the remains of the seed pea, then plant them out in double rows and string a length of plastic netting down the middle for them to climb up. Mine (I'm in NE Devon) are just starting to flower.The signs are promising, could be a bumper crop!

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Compost bins

With so much garden waste to deal with, we've experimented with different kinds of compost bin. The one we have stuck with was the beehive compost bin demonstrated on Ground Force a few years ago. It has been so successful that I made two more, one being for my son's garden in London.
Having two sitting in the garden confused a neighbour, who imagined we kept bees. He had a wasps' nest and hoped I would be able to get rid of it for him. Fortunately, I'd been down the wasps' nest road before and agreed to sort out his problem, but not until I'd shown him what was really in those "beehives".

[MrGongGong]

Having just had a large meal based around this years first crop of broad beans
I would suggest that the answer to the original question is an emphatic YES

[umslopogaas]

A large meal of beans? 'twill be a night to remember. Broad certainly, bricht perhaps and moonlicht, maybe. Memories of the campfire scene from 'Blazing Saddles' spring irresistably to mind, and nether regions too. Oof, dear, wind's getting up, better open the windows.

[MrGongGong]

A large meal of beans? 'twill be a night to remember. Broad certainly, bricht perhaps and moonlicht, maybe. Memories of the campfire scene from 'Blazing Saddles' spring irresistably to mind, and nether regions too. Oof, dear, wind's getting up, better open the windows.

erm no
I was tempted by the Jerusalem artichokes that have gone rampant in the abandoned allotment next to ours
but resisted
so all will be well

[jean]

An abandoned allotment? How can that be, when waiting lists run into the hundreds?

[MrGongGong]

An abandoned allotment? How can that be, when waiting lists run into the hundreds?

Depends on where you live, I guess ?

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

An abandoned allotment? How can that be, when waiting lists run into the hundreds?

Sometimes people rent allotments and simply neglect them. There's one like that next to my son's allotment in Lewisham, spreading weeds on to all adjacent and well cared for plots.