Observation about Peas

[swb_rob]

I decided to plant some peas in part of my garden. There were quite a few weeds growing already so I "shallow tilled" the soil to break them loose and raked them all out and planted quite a few peas that I bought from a bulk seed bin. Of course when I planted them I soaked them over night in worm tea but after planting I didn't do anything special except for one thing. I weeded and hoed around about half of them and just didn't have the time to worry about the rest. I went out to pick them today and was sort of glad to see my findings:

First, the half of the peas that were weded and hoed around didn't even all come up. The ones that did have just now started to make a few flowers but the plants are still fairly small.

The other half of the peas that were not weeded had weeds grown up all aruond them. However, they were all very healthy looking plants and were loaded with peas and even more flowers.

I believe that the shade and moisture retention of the weeds around the happy half of the pea plants paid off. I definitely do not believe that the weeds hindered those pea plants in any way. Keeping all those weeds out of the unhappy batch was a waste of time especially since I didn't really have enough mulch to put around them.

I think next year I'd like to mulch half of them and let the other half have weeds and see how it goes. My gut feeling tells me that the weedy ones will still be happier in the end. I'm curious as to whether anyone else has had any similar experiences.

[dragonfly]

I haven't grown them in weeds, but have grown them among beets, and they seem to do fine. I don't see evidence of competition for nutrients from the soil. That's an interesting observation.