As mentioned in my Too Many Seeds post, I started an indoor salad box where I tossed seeds from edible greens to grow a little cut and come again. The peas seem to be very vigorous still so they were the first on the menu: pea shoot omelets. One kid loved it, one kid was suspicious of the colored bits in their egg matrix.
Other things you can shoot this winter:
Allium greens like garlic, onion, green onions
Edible root vegetable tops like beet, turnip, oyster root
Wild roots like chicory, dandelion, burdock.* Grow in darkness if you want a milder tasting shoot. Belgian Endive is a produced by forcing the roots of a cultivated chicory in darkness.
Other vegetables you may have stored with roots such as cabbage, florence fennel and celeriac.
My technique?
I either plant in a light weed free soil mixture or sand that is kept moist. If I want it green, I put it on a sunny windowsill. If it tends to be too bitter to convince my family to eat like dandelions, I force in darkness (though I do manage to get some green dandelion down them too).
* Generally sources mention that burdock greens need to be cooked. I find that scorzonera leaves are better cooked too though they are often mentioned as a salad substitute. My variety is a bit too fuzzy for that.
6 comments:
I so love pea shoots. I've never grown them myself, but had them at restaurants. I ought to do that sometime. Are some better than others or do any peas work?
Hmm, I had no idea you could eat pea shoots! What kinds of peas? Any kind?
These are just regular shelling peas: homesteader or something like that. You can probablyuse any sort of regular garden pea but the ones that are considered better are those with words like sugar or snow in them. I occasionally hear people say that 'parsley' leafed peas are good for sprouts - the ones with lots of tendrils.
Nothing like young tender greens to take the "blah" out of winter!
Yum, pea shoots are wonderful! I have seen seeds for pea varieties that are grown for sprouts, Evergreen Seeds carries them and I'm sure they are available elsewhere. But if you've got extra pea seeds sitting around it sounds like a great use for them.
Very good advice for winter greens. Thank you!
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