Mangetouts Rodney!

Harvesting and preserving your fruit & veg

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KG Steve
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No matter how fast I harvest, mangetout peas always get away from me! Just harvested the last of my 'Shiraz'. Glad to say they make delicious peas as I'm sure you chaps already know. These are going into a salad tonight to sweeten things up.

mangetout shiraz 1 v2.jpg
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Steve Ott
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Johnboy
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Hi Steve.
My advice is to stagger the sowing times but inevitably there will come a time when the mangetout peas will start to fill out and as you say the peas are good to eat and my suggestion would be to leave a proportion of these to mature for seed next year. Generally speaking there are sufficient pods that hide away for seed next year and the policy should be that if they feel really tight in the pod leave them to mature fully and peas are about the easiest seed to deal with.
JB.
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KG Steve
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Good idea Johnboy, thank you! Yes you are right about pods hiding away - kept finding more even as I was putting the haulms into the compost bin!
Steve Ott
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Johnboy
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Hi Steve,
What I omitted to say that when picking I always have a ball of red wool in my pocket and I tie a wisp of red to the pea selected for seed.
JB.
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snooky
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Hi Steve,
You beat me to it!I was going to ask the same question.My first foray into growing Mangetout peas and like yours they are growing into full sized peas too quickly.I realised at the time that I was foolish in planting all the seeds at once and should have stagger sown them but I will eat and enjoy them as shelled peas and save some for sowing next year.As usual good advice from J.B.The variety which I grew is "Golden Sweet" a yellow podded variety from the Real Seed Company-and rather moreish!
Regards snooky

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Primrose
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:wink: I did make peapod soup one year with my shelled pea pods, just as an experiment. It was very tasty but a real faff having to blitz the pods down after cooking them. However it did prove that if you were on the verge of starvation you can still make a meal out of very little ! I suppose frozen peas are so readily available that it doesn,t make commercial sense for any retailer to sell them fresh in the pod so growing your own to eat freshly picked is a real treat, whatever variety you grow.

The coloured wool idea is an excellent one. I promised a friend some white foxglove seeds and now they've finished blooming i'm not sure I can 100% remember which were the purple ones and which were white ! It will be a two year wait now before they bloom to find out how accurate my memory is. If I've got it wrong I'll have to blame the bees and cross pollination :lol:
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Johnboy
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Hi Primrose,
People hereabouts people make Pea pod wine and it is a really beautifully light wine and quite potent.
With your foxgloves I think you will find that although they do not bloom the first year of their life I think they flower annually thereafter. So get your ball of red wool sorted out for next year!
JB.
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Geoff
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I have a problem this year. Every time I tie a paper bag over a developing seed head in the flower garden the dog pulls it off.
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KG Steve
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Yes foxgloves are biennials or short-lived perennials best treated as biennials. In other words they grow one year, flower the next. Had a lovely show of white ones this year and hope to save seeds, but also want to try 'Suttons Apricot' which is lovely for a dark corner under trees and shrubs.
Steve Ott
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Chantal
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Your posting caused me to recall the young Chinese lad that briefly lived next door to us, He came home and announced they had eaten Man Get Out peas for lunch at school. It wasn't until he wrote it down... That's what they are known as now.
Chantal

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