Easy Peasy!

 

One of my favorite garden crops is snow peas.  These are called “Melting Sugar”.  Home-grown snow peas are crisper than the ones I find in the produce aisle of the grocery store.  Those are always a little wilty from sitting around.  Mine stay crisp in the vegetable drawer for at least a week as I accumulate enough from daily pickings for a stir fry or salad.

As shown in the picture, snow peas can be grown in largish containers.  Simply plant and water. Easy peasy -- anyone with a 3 x 6 deck or sunny spot can do it.  They (the peas, not the gardeners) need something to climb on, like a trellis.  A couple of years ago, the local birds discovered the sprouts and left them looking like they’d been attacked by tiny scissors.  After that, I draped the trellis with bird netting.  That seems to solve the problem, and the peas like to climb on the netting as well.  They make a nice green and edible privacy screen.

I pick the pods when they are 3-4 inches long.  When they get going, they should be picked once or twice a day.  I like to snip off the ends, and pull off the strings if there are any. I cut them into 1 ½ inch pieces and toss in near the end of a stir fry so they just warm through or add them raw to a salad.

Quinoa salad is a summer favorite at our house.  I start with leftover quinoa and mix in a little balsamic vinaigrette to keep it from sticking together.  Mix in chopped snow peas, cucumber, sweet pepper, cherry tomatoes, and any other raw vegetables you enjoy.  Before serving, mix in a little more vinaigrette and some cubed cheese and chopped avocado.  Instead of the cheese, you could add cubed cooked chicken or ham.  If you don’t care for quinoa, you could substitute rice or pasta.  When I make this with pasta, I marinate the salad in Italian dressing, then add ranch dressing at the end to coat the pasta and make the dressing a little creamy.  These are two cool summer salads that we enjoy when the temps reach the 90s, like they have this week.

Regrettably, my peas don’t care for the hot weather, so they are done for the season.  When the pods start to get thick and curl, it’s off to the composter for them.

 

Growing My Own

Growing a small salad or kitchen garden is so easy, I don’t know why everyone with a deck or patio doesn’t do it. Lettuce, for example. (Let us consider lettuce!) A packet of mixed seeds costs less than $3. I bought “Bon Vivant” from Ed Hume. It has several varieties of green and red leaf lettuce.

You scratch a little groove in some potting soil in a pot or window box. I use a bamboo skewer for a lot of my planting. Very high tech! Scatter in the seeds – they look like pepper. Brush a little dirt back over the groove and gently press down. Water. In a couple of weeks, you will see tiny leaves popping up. Keep watering.

In a few more weeks, you can start snipping some of the larger leaves for Spring Mix – that very expensive organic mix that looks like weeds in the grocery store. You might have to watch out for birds or slugs, depending on your climate. That’s why I like to garden on the deck; it’s right in front of my nose to watch for problems.

And here are the benefits: this lettuce couldn’t be fresher, unless you just ate the seeds, which I don’t recommend. Less waste because you only pick what you want right now for your salad. You can avoid using synthetic fertilizers or pesticides, especially important since lettuce is one of the "dirty dozen." No waste of energy resources for transportation and no packaging to dispose of. And best of all, unlike most other things you pick up off the ground, you know where it’s been.

If you want to branch out a little, you could plant a box of greens. I mixed mustard, spinach, and chard seeds. The mustard is predominant, and I’m thinning it for salad also. It’s great – spicy but not at all bitter. I also planted a bush tomato plant (Early Girl) and I’m doing my sunshine dance in hopes of ripe tomatoes soon.

So right now, the only effort is to water and admire. Tasting summer—priceless!