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| Picture A: a root nightmare Picture B: Haphazardly planted and abused pea plants |
It was my mission this year to
put myself through as much heartache and disappointment as possible by growing
the majority of my vegetables from seed.
So far its all going to plan thanks to a combination of duff seeds, leggy
seedlings as my dining room is over warm and finished off by rampant
slugs. However on a trip to my local
garden centre a couple of months back for summer bulbs (more on this later, I
bought quite a few) the mother ended up purchasing a tray of sugar snap pea
seedlings. In her words they just looked
so ‘alive and growing’ so we cut ourselves some slack and bought them. It felt wrong but what the heck. Boy did they grow!
Far before I was ready there was
a definite yellowing of the leaves and crammed in together like spectators at a
music gig there was a pressing need to free them from their rooty prison and
give them room to stretch their feet. My
veg patch was not remotely ready so I had to panic de-weed and dig a section to
get my peas in.
Upon removal of the seedlings
from their tray a rather significant problem became evident. As I had left them in there a tad long, the
abundance of root had interwoven nicely creating an impenetrable knot. Im not even sure if your mean't to break apart
the seedlings to plant them individually but this didn’t seem much of an
option. I couldn’t just stick six in
together, the result would be a tangle far worse than even my morning hair and
probably not prime pea producing conditions.
I hoped to be able to tease the
roots apart but a gentle coaxing proved ineffective. I tried slicing the root ball into segments
but the knife wouldn’t cut through, although this was the knife that struggled
to polish off slugs so this may have been down to my choice of implement. I ended up just ripping them apart in a very
brutal fashion into ones, twos and threes, hoping to leave at least some roots
attached to the plants. The mother who
was watching on looked horrified but I always say ‘it will be fine they want to
grow', I will likely lose a few but some should struggle on. Generally im saying this as im mangling the
roots of something; Im not known for gently potting up plants with love and
tenderness.
Its been several weeks now and im
pleased to report that not a single pea has given up its fight for life. The bottom leaves still look yellow but there
is new green growth and signs of gearing up to flower so its all good. Finally a success!
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