The Next Generation of Peas

Like much of life, not everything about growing food, is happy, peaceful, and fruitful.  Even those who claim to have a green thumb are likely to make an occasional mistake.  Gardening does allow you to try and try again until you get things right.  This year we planted snow peas indoors in early January along side our wonderful trays of spinach, lettuce, and assorted other greens.  The greens are doing well but the peas are dead.  You might conclude from this that peas are difficult to grow, but you would be wrong.  In fact, growing snow peas is easy.  The "root cause" of our trouble (pun intended) was that the peas grew much, much faster than the rest of the seedlings.  In an outdoor garden under sunshine this is no trouble, but beneath the artificial grow lights of our system, the peas quickly became taller than their neighbors.  Had we raised the lights to accommodate the peas, the rest of the seedlings would have suffered.  Winter prevent us from putting the peas into the ground, and the recent snowfall has destroyed our hoop house once again.  So in a weak attempt to remedy the situation we moved the peas to the basement where they soon became neglected.  We will plant snow peas again, in the spring, in the ground, as we should have done in the first place.  And we vow to learn from our mistake and enjoy organic snow peas for years to come.

You might conclude that that is the end of the story, but you would be wrong about that too.  The root cause of the unfortunate snow pea neglect was that the neighbor has planted a sort of pea of his own, that is, he is expecting an addition to the family this spring.  It is his first offspring, I might add.  Preparation for the arrival of the youngling has the neighbors' minds on many things now that compete with gardening.  Without complaint we look forward to his arrival--we know it is a he, in fact--because it means we soon will have another hand to turn soil, pull weeds, and water the plants.  Just kidding, of course.  My advice to him, should he read this blog in the years to come, is to learn from his mistakes, no matter how few they are, and to resist the temptation to plant snow peas indoors.  Congratulations, Neighbor.

The Coldest Night of Your Life

With temperatures forecast around -8 to -4 degrees F tonight for Central Maryland, this could be the coldest night of your life if you were born and live here.  Given the weather, it is unlikely that we'll be actually planting anything outdoors anytime soon, so we're enjoying our trays of seedlings in a variety of creative new ways.  I cannot recall a past growing season when we ate so many of our tiny plants without planting them.  Last night we brought an entire tray of baby Bok Choi to share at a family dinner.  For lunch I made a ham sandwich with Arugula sprouts.  But the best so far was Chinese egg fried-rice with Tong Ho micro-greens for breakfast.  Time to grab a blanket, make a spot in front of the wood stove, and plant more seedlings!

 Left, baby lettuce; right, even the chickens

are rebelling against the cold weather.

Chinese Hot Pot

I grew up in the city, far away from the influences of farm life.  This may explain why I find so many aspects of growing food to be completely magical and unlike anything I have ever before imagined.  For example, tonight we harvested young seedlings to use in Chinese hot pot.  If you have never eaten hot pot, I encourage you to do an Internet search and try making it.  Chinese hot pot is a sort of stew made at the table typically for the evening meal during wintertime.  It is more of an assembly of ingredients and a way of cooking at the table than a recipe, although certain sauces can be prepared in advance.  Over the course of the meal, fresh ingredients are added to hot broth in the center of the table as you dine, including meat, fish, mushrooms, seafood, and fresh greens.  For tonight's meal we thinned five trays of three-inch seedlings to yield a large bowl of greens for use in the stew: lettuce, bok choi, Swiss chard, tong ho, and young kale.  The greens need only a few moments of blanching in the broth.  This is a wonderful and unexpected way to enjoy the rich nutrition and flavor of delicate greens.

Chinese Hot Pot prepared at the table, clockwise from upper right:

broth with tofu and mushrooms simmering on a propane burner,

peanut sauce, large colander of fresh micro-greens, thinly sliced beef.

Transplanting Indoors

It's hard to go from a full tray of healthy seedlings to a mere dozen plants or so, but it is for the better.  Our seedlings were planted too early to go into the unheated hoop house or beneath row covers.  Today's high temperature of 10 degrees (F) underscores the fact.  Their roots are becoming too long for trays and their tops too intertwined to separate as they vie for light and nutrients.  This afternoon we transplanted this tray of bok choi into deeper individual pots.  In a day or two these 15 plants will flourish again as they continue onward to maturity.  The process of selecting winners and losers is about as much fun as being cooped up indoors due to the weather.  We will keep the rest of the bok choi for a few days to make sure the transplants make it.  Next week we will consume or give away the rest.

Transplanted bok choi in the background came from the overcrowed tray

in the foreground.  The three heirloom mustard greens in the upper left

corner are the only survivors from an old pack of 2012 heirloom seeds.

Microgreens

Many of our indoor seedlings have reached three inches in height, making them perfect candidates for transplanting into larger containers or into the ground.  As much as we'd like to start planting under row covers or in the hoop house, the predicted cold weather and snowfall make it impossible.  In the mean time we are enjoying thinning the seedlings as this effort yields a delicious and healthy mix of edible tiny green leaves known as microgreens.  The lettuce, chard, and kale will make it into salads, while the bok choi and Asian green tong ho are a perfect addition to stir-fries and Chinese hot pot.  Most go straight from the tray to the mouth.  And it doesn't take much.  Some researchers claim that microgreens contain up to 40 times the concentration of nutrients, such as vitamin E, vitamin C, and beta-carotene, over their mature counterparts.

Harvesting four week-old Baby Arugula lettuce.