Last fall I bought 5 lbs of Austrian Peas intending to grow them as winter fodder for the chickens. I carefully planted them in a somewhat sheltered area on the sunny south side of a coop. After serving several years as the floor of a duck house and a year of being abandoned to the open air, the soil here was fantastic! However, as is often the case, I drug my heels getting a canopy net up and darned if my South American flock didn't discover and devour all those adorable little seedlings.
Meanwhile, back in the kitchen, I was canning up the paltry 10 pints of green beans we managed to harvest - probably would have only been 6 pints but I stretched them with some sliced carrots. We plowed through those in a mere 2 months. That's partly because they made for a delicious bean soup and partly because my family apparently loves green beans! We resolved to plan more beans and peas in 2015.
I came across this article (Mother Earth News, Oct/Nov 2014, Cheryl Long) and have been inspired to give these peas a second go around - this time in a glass walled coop that has been fallow for the last six months. I'll have to add a plastic covered canopy but I know for a fact (!) this spot can hold heat. Now I just need to get my soil heating and perhaps by next week I'll have peas sprouting :)
