At about the time I was accepting that I couldn't manage the garden last summer, I stuck a few peas in a pot. Even if I hadn't planted enough for a proper crop, maybe a few late peas in a pot could be brought indoors when the weather got cold, and perhaps produce a small bonus crop in the winter.
Sure enough, the peas came up. I moved the pot into the conservatory when frosts threatened and I even watered it occasionally. In due course, they produced flowers and even a few pods.
Peas in the conservatory. That's freecycled insulation in the background.
Unfortunately, that's as far as they got. Today I gave up waiting for those pods to fatten up and picked a handful.
This is about as good as it got
I'm not sure whether it was the cold, lack of light, lack of water, or insufficient nutrients in the soil, but the answer would seem to be no, we cannot have peas in our time.
Oh dear... this is why I prefer to plant snow peas with edible pods - no waiting for them to mature and they taste so yummy. But I wonder how they managed to get pollinated indoors... can the bees get in?
ReplyDeleteWe leave a small window open in the conservatory so the cat doesn't get trapped in there. As it is, she'd rather we opened the door for her than go out through the window and round to her cat flap in the other door. I'm not sure about bees in there, though (apart from that time I left a barrel of honey in there and a whole swarm of them came in), but maybe other pollinating insects...?
DeleteSnow peas definitely a better bet - if only Ian liked them!
So if they had been mange tout you would be onto a winner there! From what I've read, peas are self-fertile and don't need pollinating... I'm feeling hungry looking at your picture and just to get some flowers in winter is an achievement!
ReplyDeleteAh, so no need for indoor bees, then. It's true, the flowers were cheering, even if I didn't get any peas.
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