The Re-homing of the Peas

Moving house is never easy… its exceptionally difficult if you happen to be a 200Kg garden full of Snow Peas!

A couple of months ago I ‘installed’ a garden at Sister and Brother-in-law’s house…..I will claim any free space I can find for a garden, even if it happens to be in someone else’s back yard 🙂

The garden included a few pots with some Kale and Radish, and a ‘Climbing planter garden‘ i had bought from Masters.

In the planter garden we put some Snow Peas and Sugar Snap Peas.

They were growing very well – but the guys have just bought a new house in Torquay and moving the garden down there was not really an option. hmmmm what to do???

It weighs at least 200Kg based on the number of bags of compost, poo and soil that it is filled with + water – so there was no chance that it could be moved, as it was, without Cam, Carly or I putting our backs out hahahah.

After much contemplation and a good long chat with my Cat, I decided that we might be able to move the garden saving at least half of the plants. The idea was to dig out the plants and soil just from just one end, and slide the rest of the garden onto a ‘tarp’. This meant that 2 people could drag and hoist the tarp into the boot of the car… kinda like disposing a dead body lol (did i just write that???? hahaha)

I started by cutting the trellis down the center:

Using 2 spades, Cam and I were able to lift out one end (the Sugar Snaps) and drop them in a tub without too much difficulty…

After scooping out some more dirt, we slid the reaming garden onto the tarp and carried it out to the car – both making out that we are strong and that our arms were not about to drop off.

No pics of this part of the process as i has too busy gasping for breath hahahah

Thankfully, Carly offered Cam’s services to travel to my place and help me with the ‘lift’ at this end. I’m not sure if she threw him under the bus, or if he was glad to have a short breaking from packing duties at home hahah.

Peas - the big move — Peas – the big move

You can see in the pic above that half the plants are still in the original garden and the other half are in the blue tub- they all are still quite firmly attached to their trellis 😦

I decided that the best move was to try and gently cut away the plastic trellis so i could work a bit more freely with the plants.

A new trellis was made with the garden wire that Chris gave me during the raid on his garden last week. I was so glad to have it on hand…. Thanks again Reardons!

After re-homing the dislodged peas I realised that some of the shorter plants at the front would need a hand to reach the new wire trellis at the back of the planter – so I re-used one of the plastic bits that had been cut off.

I was happy just to save and reuse the rich dirt that was in the planter… but it looks like we may have actually saved at least half of the plants!!

YAY

The planter has been placed along the new western fence line where there were already other snow peas planted in foam boxes… so now i look like a true Pea Farmer! (shout out to Souraya’s Dad hahahah)