An experiment

This jar? It's full of peas. These will grow into snap peas. Last Sunday I soaked them in water overnight, drained them the next day, and let them sit on the kitchen counter with a lid set on lightly, shaking them gently once in a while to keep them aerated and non-moldy. Today they were sporting these lovely "radicals," the proto-roots that first spring forth from a germinating seed.

Why do this? Because I've been reading that in my area, we can start peas in January, well ahead of my grandmother's pea-planting date, which was Washington's birthday, in February.

So I'm going to find out if that's so. But doubting that cold soils would encourage germination, I did the germinating on the kitchen counter. I put the seeds in the ground this afternoon with some pea inoculant. We'll see what happens. I'll try another batch later in February and see if there's a difference in harvest date.