I learned to cook with pea greens (especially stir fries) when we lived up in Madison and I shopped at the Farmer's Market there. Now we have our own garden again but we don't know which peas are especially good for nice tender pea greens. Can someone help me out here so I know what to plant for next year? Thanks!
I believe these would be young plants of snowpeas -- whatever variety is available very cheaply. Plant thickly, chop them all down when they are a few inches tall. These would be best planted intrays (think wheat grass) and greenhouse produced. (You could probably snip the growing tips from snowpeas planted in the garden, too, but the yeild of greens would be small and would hurt the yeild of peapods.)
Pea greens are delicious sauteed very quickly with garlic in extremely hot oil.
Here's a webpage I found where you could order wheatgrass, various greens (including pea greens) or seeds and trays for growing your own pea greens:
For growing wheat grass, buckwheat, millet lettuce, sunflower greens, pea greens and barley grass.
Soak 1¼ lbs seed in water for 12 hours. Fill 17" by 17" wheatgrass tray with ½" soil or compost. Rinse seed and spread over soil. Sprinkle until soil is moist. Place another tray inside the tray you planted so that it rests directly on the seed. Water twice daily. On the third day the sprouts should start to lift the tray. Remove tray and water as needed. When sprouts reach desired height, snip and enjoy. For small seed, soak about 1/3 cup seed and transfer to soil after sprouting in jar for 1 to 2 days.
Look on the web for sprouting seeds. The last time I bought some, they were very tough, but not always. Buy no less than a pound, they go fast.
Also, pea greens will come up indoors - the only veggie you can eat fresh in january and february. I use seedling trays, fill them with good soil, scatter the peas very thickly, and cover with some more soil. You can water them soggy and will still come up and be ready in
17-21 days depending on temp (I only have to water twice). At the end, you are left with a slab of soil, held together by a web of pea roots, good to go in the compost pile for breakdown.
Wow! What great information. Thanks so much! :)
I am definitely going to try this!! Thanks :)
WOW! They charge $17.50 for 5 lbs of buckwheat. That's $3.50/lb.
I just bought buckwheat seeds for use as a cover crop. I paid $0.57/lb. It would have been less if I'd bought a large quantity, but I only needed a couple of pounds. I bought it from Agway (farm and feed store).
But even if you bought buckwheat, wheat, and sunflower seeds from natural food stores - or online natural-food sellers - it would be an awful lot less than the prices on that site.
Online natural food sellers:
I don't know how much the seed-houses charge for pea seed by the pound. I saw it in a local Agway and IIRC it was about $1/lb. (I can't remember for sure.)
Pat
Yes that is kind of expensive.
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