Sweet Pea Seedlings Don't Care About Politics

(Great stuff)
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Astonishingly enough, my sweet peas are up. They germinated very quickly, more than a full week faster than I expected (normal germination is 14- 21 days; these were up in 5 days). Most instructions for sweet peas say "soak in water for 24 hours", but I really think using filtered water this time made all the difference. Ever since learning to ferment vegetables, I'm very conscious of chlorine in water; chlorine inhibits many positive bacterial functions. Surely there's some chlorine-free magic afoot with these babies.

And even though we are getting another 7 inches of snow today and tomorrow, if the sweet peas are up, spring is almost here. Even though my frost date is April 21, I expect they can go out in about 4 weeks (End of March). Sweet peas are tough little buggers.

Peas and shanties

(Peas make me think of sea shanties)

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Every time I check on my peas, I get snippets of an old sea shanty called "Hogeye Man" running through my head. A hogeye is a kind of barge, so a hogeye man is one of its sailors. Apparently, this is one of the smuttier versions of the song in print and audio; various other versions were sadly deemed too blue for posterity.

...

And Sally's in the garden, pickin' peas,

Her long golden hair hangs down to her knee

(With a hogeye,

Railroad navvy, with a hogeye

Row ashore with a hogeye, oh

She wants a hogeye man.)

.

And Sally's in the garden, shellin' peas,

Her little hogeye a-sittin' on her knee

( )

And Sally's in the garden, makin' duff,

The cheeks of her arse go chuff, chuff, chuff

( )

...

I have always wondered about the "chuff, chuff, chuff" bit of the song. Awfully audio-visual, isn't it?

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I think peas don't like me. Last year, I got about 6 pods, and bitter, miserable little things they were, too.

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This year so far, I've counted only a few flowers. Soon enough, it will be too hot for peas, so this is not promising. I planted as I was told- even added sharp sand to the planter and dug it in for better drainage. Two years of trying and failing with peas may be the maximum failure rate for me. I'm going to erect shadecloth once it gets hot, and see if I can't extend their sad little lives.

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Anybody have good luck with peas in pots? Maybe containers are not their scene. And it could be that I just can't plant enough for a reasonable pea harvest. At this rate, I'll never have enough peas to shell while sitting in my garden, wearing a blond wig, and chuffing. Oh, wait, that's with the duff. What the heck is duff, anyway?

Beans, beans...

(All baby plants look like Muppets to me)

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These are scarlet runner beans. Aren't they cute? Flowers are edible, bean pods are too- you can eat 'em like green beans. Apparently when dried, the beans themselves taste a lot like butter beans. I love how they all are coming up at once, like somebody flipped a switch.

.

I've set up a bamboo-pole teepee above them, and I'll add string supports as soon as they get a little bigger. Can't wait to see how these babies grow.

Take My Tomatoes! Please!

(Time to go, kids)

I have this little problem, see. I start more tomatoes, peppers, greens, what-have-you, than I myself actually have room to grow, with the conscious anticipation that I will give them away. I just want everyone to garden, plain and simple. Even if it's a single tomato plant.

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If that's wrong, I don't wanna be right.

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In truth, I think it's probably where my unused maternal energy has landed and taken up roost, child-free as I am.

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I start them at my seedling station, harden them off, and start sending out e-mails a week or two before our last local frost date. Then I lovingly send them packing, like a kid off to college. And like a parent, I've enjoyed them, they've enriched my life, it's been totally worth the effort yada yada, but really, I can't wait for them to leave.

Lookit! Lookit!

(71F today! Ahhhh...)

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It was a beautiful day today, and the green babies thought so, too. The tall, lanky, hairy kids right in front are finocchio, growing fast. Also pictured are peppers, chard, kale, asian greens, bush beans, basil, tomatoes, and lettuce- the usual kitchen garden suspects. Off to the left in the orange trough is Vitamin Green- an asian green I've never tried. Yum. Dang, when do we eat??

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The list might seem kind of ordinary, but here's the thing about growing your own food: You're not limited to ordinary supermarket varieties and you get some amazing tastes that you simply cannot buy. For instance, all of the lettuce I'm growing would turn into green slime if stuck in a box and shipped across the country like most of our lettuce now is. There are fewer than 20 varieties of lettuce that can handle the rigors of transport. One of the best homegrown varieties is called butterhead. It can barely be sold at farmer's markets- it just can't handle travel of more than a few feet from garden to plate.

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Of course, these all have to be grown from seed... but waiting is the very heart of gardening.

Whew.

(Green Babies!)

I just got off a twelve-day work week last Friday. Big push/ hot due date for a customer- you probably know the drill. Subsequently, the minute the project was put to bed, all my stress went directly to my rotten, good-for-nothing neck (whiplash in grad school, and natch, it was never properly treated), so I had to lay pretty low this weekend. Did some knitting. Took naps. Drank Bloody Marys. Started some salad greens in flats. My favorite version of lazy.

But look! Seedlings! Today was their first day in the sun. Just for an hour. I swear there is new growth (even though I've read that seedlings store energy during the day and use it to grow at night).

Here pictured:

Pink tomato (a big, tart sandwich slicer)

San Marzano tomato (sauce and paste pear tomato)
Paul Robeson tomato (the best tomato I've ever eaten- seeds saved from last year)
Japanese Black Trifele tomato (a good fresh tomato, I hear- I've yet to try it)
and one Supersweet 100 for my in-laws. (I don't like cherry tomatoes, but I grew this last year. It's astonishingly prolific. Too prolific- I've got tomatoes sprouting in my worm bins from using "finished" compost as bedding. Tomato seeds are notorious for surviving compost.)

There are a few straggler peppers I haven't put out yet- peppers need a lot of heat and their feet are a bit cold, so they don't even have true leaves yet. Which leads me to my wee pepper disaster- and hey, here's a fun recipe for you to try!

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How to make Pepper Surprise:
1) Fill expanded peat pellets with seed, correspond to a hand-drawn diagram.
2) Tip peat pellets onto floor.
3) Watch in horror as they bounce all over the floor like little tires.

I'll never use peat pellets again- for many reasons- but this was the topper. No more peat pellets! Nein, nunca.

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Fun Fact!
The reliable way you can tell the difference between peppers and tomatoes when they are babies is this- tomatoes have hairs on their stalks, and peppers don't. Other than that, it's a tough business. All nightshade babies pretty much look alike.

I'm having babies!

(Green babies, that is.)

Of course, these are the sort of babies that will get eaten...

I started my first wave of hot-weather seedlings a few days ago, and some are already up. Genovese Basil, a few Pink tomatos, a San Marzano tomato, and a Japanese Black Trifele tomato are peeking up with their wee cotyledons. No sign yet from my various peppers, but they usually take over a week. Nor is there any sign of my 2008 experiment, finocchio.

Finocchio (F. vulgare azoricum) is also called Florence fennel. You eat the bulb. It looks rather like a squashed, rounded head of celery, but with feathery leaves like dill. As the plant grows, you mound dirt around the base to protect the bulb from light so it will blanch. Finocchio likes a very rich growing medium, which I'm sure my worms will be more than happy to provide.

Finocchio is incredibly delicious; it has a vaguely nutty licorice flavor, and when roasted, it turns sort of sweet. I cook it simply- slice, toss with salt and olive oil, and roast it under a broiler. It's outstanding when roasted with sliced potatoes.

Last summer, my husband and I discovered an abiding passion for basil pesto. I've eaten it with disregard and without complaint; I've never loved the stuff. Then I read that basil TYPE makes a big difference in the pesto. In retrospect, that finding was a big, fat no duh.

So far, Genovese basil is our favorite for pesto. It has enormous leaves, easy to chop. The leaves have a savory, smoky flavor, and not much of that peppery taste found in Thai basil (which I don't care for at all). We ate so much of the Genovese pesto last year, by the end of August we were actually sick of it. This year, I will probably attempt to oil-preserve some, even though I find the commercial bottled stuff truly vile.

For me now, basil pesto is the embodiment of seasonal food; it's the food you pine for in deep winter and grow to hate by late summer. In other words, food bliss.