Ep 266 It's Not Too Late to Plant Again, Sweet Pea
Sat, August 29, 2026 9:52PM • 15:23
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Vegetable garden, Beets, Radishes, Carrots, Zucchini, Cucumbers, Pollination, Sweet peas, Snow peas, Stilt grass, Weeding, Fall planting, Resilience, New beginnings, Garden life
SPEAKERS
Mary Stone
Mary Stone 00:00
Hello, fellow lovers of all things green. I'm Mary Stone, and welcome to Garden Dilemmas, Delights, and Discoveries. It's not only about gardens; it's about nature's inspirations, about grasping the glories of the world around us, gathering what we learn from Mother Nature, and carrying these lessons into our garden of life. So let's jump in in the spirit of learning from each other; we have lots to talk about.
Mary Stone 00:26
Hello there, it's Mary Stone on the screen porch, and we just had a deluge of a rainstorm. I think the third one of the day, and now the sun is shining. And I went out there to look for a rainbow, and I haven't seen a rainbow yet. So maybe it'll join us when I'm chatting with you. I missed all of you last week, and I felt very sad about that. My personal life once again got in the way. This morning I had another round of legal process to address, and as I was preparing my notes for you, it gave me strength, and I want to thank you for that. I appreciate that more than you know. There's something very fitting about a story called "It's Not Too Late to Plant Again, arriving after a week when life got too hectic to produce an episode.
Mary Stone 01:12
Recently, I weeded the renovated front garden, getting rid of the stilt grass we spoke about last time. Then I wandered up to the vegetable garden; only two of its three sections were planted this year, and even those didn't turn out as I had imagined. I should mention that you still hear a lot of rain because it's coming from the leaves and from the gutters. Yet while I've been harvesting modestly, the garden has brought me joy, acceptance of imperfections, and gratitude for the gifts that come from both failure and growth. Then I looked at the neglected third section overrun with weeds, and something shifted. What appeared to be a garden I had failed to tend turned out to hold gifts waiting for me, and possibilities for beginning again, which led to this week's story, and it starts like this:
Mary Stone 02:07
Hello, fellow lovers of all things green. Last Sunday, I found myself looking at a section of my vegetable garden I never developed this year. Japanese stilt grass has taken advantage of my neglect, filling the space where vegetables might have grown. Despite my best intentions, the garden never really found its stride, and the season got away from me, just as life can tend to do if we don't take time to pause, observe, and relish the world around us. Spring was extraordinarily dry, and my snow peas produced little, but the red barren beets I planted in April have given me such pleasure, and a new love of beet greens. The seed packet says about 55 days to harvest. Having sown them on April 15, they are well beyond maturity, but that doesn't mean that they all need to come out. Beets are happy sitting in the ground as they move toward cooler weather, which can make the roots sweeter, much like when we go through difficult times in the garden of life.
Mary Stone 03:11
After experiencing sadness and hurt, your heart heals, and you begin to feel lifted. Life becomes a little sweeter. Sometimes it's only after experiencing loss that we grow to cherish new beginnings. So why not sow a few more beet seeds for tender baby beets and greens as temperatures cool? It doesn't matter if the roots stay tiny, because greens are good. While inventorying my other seed packs. I came across cherry bell radishes from 2022. I had planted two rows from the old pack in spring, as I've mentioned in previous episodes. There was nothing to lose, and for the first time, the seeds produced plentifully. In previous years, those very same seeds had pitiful outcomes. It just goes to show that everything in life is a variable. Everything is about change, and unexpected outcomes can bring the greatest delights. Cherry bell radishes take 22 days to harvest, says the seed pack. Plenty of time remains this season to grow them. I learned that sometimes, because spring turns to summer so quickly, radish crops can taste bitter or have a mealy texture. Truth be told, many of mine had that fate, but I relish the radish greens. Are you noticing a theme here? Me and my greens.
Mary Stone 04:36
I really-it's a big thing for me. I never really ate the greens of my vegetable garden, and it's been my main crop, isn't that special? The cooler temperatures of fall should help the next crop stay tender. Certainly worth a try. Then there are my carrots. You may recall our conversation a while ago about tiny seeds and how hard they can be to plant. One tree. Is to use the tip of a damp toothpick to pick up each tiny seed and carefully place it where you want it to grow. Apparently, I could have used that advice when I planted my carrots in April. Mine came up too close together, and I never thinned them properly. I kind of felt bad about weeding out those carrots. I tried the greens too, and they're a bit bitter, but they're quite good. Still, I had an enjoyable outcome. Some carrots grew despite being crowded. Another reminder that gardens don't have to be perfect to give us something good. We can grow despite being crowded, too.
Mary Stone 05:37
Back to my beets. I harvested the big guys, the ones over two inches wide, letting the smaller ones keep growing. The spring dryness may have stunted them, so perhaps the plentiful recent rains will help them size up before becoming woody. Meanwhile, the greens from the big boys were yummy. The insect holes didn't bother me. If they're good for the critters. They're good for us. Mom used to say, "When we took home castaways from the produce stand where she and I worked when I was a kid." I snagged a few greens from the smaller beets too, leaving enough for the roots to keep growing. Beets tolerate frost; their roots protected by the soil, after all. But before a hard freeze, I'll harvest the rest or mulch them with leaf mold to extend the season even more. There's nothing wrong with trying to extend the joy, just as there's nothing wrong with extending the joy in our lives. But there is a time to reap the bounty and move on to the next season, isn't there?
Mary Stone 06:41
A side note here: I watched with anticipation the growth of one zucchini, only one, growing on the three mounds of plants. It reached a nice size for harvesting, but I decided to let it grow a bit more. The bigger, the better, right? It would be so perfect on the grill. After reaching about eight inches long and plump with promise, the day came to pick my prize, only to find half of it was mushy, moushad, I like to say, but I left the whole fruit for wildlife to enjoy. The moral of the story: bigger is not always better. Last year's zucchini crop was magnificent. This year, no go. It makes last year's crop even more memorable in my mind, and the next season, I will try again.
Mary Stone 07:30
Speaking of, my cucumber plants are thriving and full of blooms. I've seen tiny insects enjoying the pollen, but no cukes yet. Maybe I can help pollinate them somehow. I learned how to do that with zucchini in my old classic, Birds and Bees of Zucchini Flowers. I wrote long ago. I featured it again in episode 183, Honorable Harvest, Downsize and Do Over. We learned we can use a paintbrush to pollinate the DIY way. Perhaps it works for cucumbers too. Indeed, by mid-August it would be easy to call it the end of the planting season, but I came across my leftover snow peas and wondered if it was too late for a fall crop. A little research brought a clarification that made me smile. Did I mean edible garden peas or sweet peas, Lathyrus odoratis, those wonderfully fragrant annual flowers? The question took me back to a story I wrote 11 years ago, almost to the day. A client named Melanie of Newton, New Jersey, asked whether the perennial sweet peas covering her pool fence were edible. They sure looked it, dead ringers for the peas in our vegetable gardens. But sweet peas are mildly toxic if eaten in excess, so I'd stay clear. Lethierus latifolias, called perennial sweet pea, everlasting pea, or pea vine, is native to Europe and escaped from gardens. You see it blooming all along the roads during the summer. Unlike its annual relative, it has no scent.
Mary Stone 09:06
The annual sweet pea enchants us with delicate fragrance and beautiful bouquets, but neither are the peas we should be having for supper. Isn't it funny how sweet pea became a term of endearment? You may recall Sweet Pea is the baby found on Popeye's doorstep, whom Popeye adopts and calls Boy Kid. Hey, Sweet Pea, why not plant edible peas you can safely eat? And so here we are, 11 years later, and I'm taking my own advice. Although not everyone may like peas. They are packed with nutrients, they flower, are yummy, and they're quite cute. Fall pea crops can be finicky, but the minimal effort and expense are worth a try, especially since my spring crop has been such a disappointment. There is something satisfying about giving peas another chance; spring hasn't worked out, but perhaps fall will. The trick is to harvest before a hard frost, but peas can tolerate light frost, and the good old sheet-covering technique can buy more growing time. Garden ghosts, I like to call them. How many of you have covered your potted gardens when frost is in the forecast? We do this for weeks. On and off they go until November slides in, and we finally realize it's time to say goodbye to our annual garden guests.
Mary Stone 10:33
My leftover seeds are Oregon sugar pod, too, snow peas, Pisum sativum. The packet says 68 days to harvest and shows August through September for fall sowing in our region. Sowing on August 16 puts the theoretical harvest around October 23, which is after the frost time. However, shortening days in cooler fall temperatures can slow maturity. But in our favor is that we can eat snow pea pods when they are young and flat, so picking before full maturity is fine. And peas bring protein, fiber, micronutrients, and antioxidants to the table. Popeye would be proud. Of course, before planting them, I had to reclaim the neglected patch from the stilt grass. Perhaps that is the real lesson.
Mary Stone 11:23
Sometimes the season gets away from us, but that doesn't mean the opportunity has passed. We clear a little space, plant again, and see what happens. Just as with the garden of life, before anything new can grow, we have to open our hearts and clear a little space. Garden dilemmas? AskMaryStone.com.
Mary Stone 11:48
There's a punchline to all my sharing today, and that is: after clearing the stilt grass from a portion of my vegetable garden I had considered vacant, I realized it wasn't vacant at all. As I pulled out the invader, I uncovered two unusual vegetable plants gifted to me by Steve Oken of Stone Hedge Growers, the nearby farmer who grows annuals for the trade I met this year. We chatted about Steve in episode 254- Leave Room for Wandering - Unexpected Greenhouse Treasures. Below the stilt grass. The bitter melon grew; its deeply cut foliage twisting delicately around tendrils, and the Italian heirloom squash, also known as snake gourd, was growing with enthusiasm. You may recall that Steve said Italian Americans call it gagots. I just love that word. It's so funny.
Mary Stone 12:43
True, neither plant was thriving; both had been overshadowed by the invasive grass, but they were still there. Rather than beat myself up for allowing the garden to become overgrown, I felt gratitude for the gift of their resilience, and mine. Perhaps that is the real lesson. Our seasons don't always unfold as we hoped. Maybe the seeds barely produced the first time around. Maybe the carrots grew too close together, and the zucchini turned to mush, or the peas never amounted to much. And maybe there are neglected places that wait for us until we're ready to begin again. Abandoned plans or lost relationships can open another planting window. What didn't work in April can be tried again in the August of our lives. The place we've neglected that we have to weed before we can begin may be precisely where the next possibility is waiting. Last time we chatted about tending what we can, maybe missing you last week was meant to be. What sprouted from it is a companion lesson. We tend what we can, accept what we couldn't, and we discover it's not too late to plan again. So thank you for visiting me on the screen porch, my dear friends.
Mary Stone 14:11
It's so good to be back with you again, and I have to say we're going to have to kind of be a moving target here. I may be talking with you every other week or so, and as you could probably tell from this one, our chat's a bit longer, so you can spread it out and listen to it in parts if you'd like. But more than that, I hope you email me your stories. I love hearing from you. Really, it's been such an honor to get so many messages from you, my dear listeners. So please keep those emails coming at askmarystone@gmail.com. I will see you next time on the screen porch, whenever that is. Go plant some seeds. It's not too late to plant again. See you next time.
Mary Stone 14:53
You can follow Garden Dilemmas on Facebook or online at garden dilemmas.com, and on Instagram at hashtag. Mary Elaine Stone, Garden Dilemmas, Delights, and Discoveries is produced by Alex Bartling. Thanks for coming by. I look forward to chatting again from my screen porch, and always remember to embrace the unexpected in this garden of life. Have a great day.
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