According to Judy

Every year, I buy a garden calendar. Two reasons: I love its optimism, and I need a good laugh.

Pea Shoots
Pea Shoots

In March, says my calendar, “Plant lettuce, spinach, chard and peas, when first the lilac shows its leaves.” I did say optimistic, didn’t I?

Still, here comes St. Patrick’s Day. Greens are required, and the springiest, trendiest green is the pea shoot. Sure and begorra, they’re a lovely vegetable – sweet, tender, and ruinously expensive.

The Chinese, who call them dou miao, have been growing them for stir-fries since Confucius was a pup, but I’d never eaten pea shoots, scientific name pisum sativum, until they started showingup in chi-chi restaurants. Now they’re everywhere. One waiter told me the chef had grown them himself, in his hydroponic garden. (He had not. The chef doesn’t even have a dirt garden, let alone hydroponic.)

I checked the Chinatown source, but the shoots were leggy and tough. Smaller ones in an organic spot cost a bundle. The answer was clear: grow my own. They’d be sweeter, younger, cheaper. I’d be the 2015 equivalent of those ancestral women who shot their own bison from the back of a fast-galloping horse.

I was encouraged, not to mention misled, by a lot of Internet blarney about how easy these little devils are to grow. One Irish site had trialed 40-odd varieties to find the best. Another site insisted that any old dried pea would work just as well.
To be safe, I invested heavily in two packages of organic snow peas and soaked them overnight. Filled an egg carton with potting soil; planted my pisum sativum thick as hair on a dog. Kept them moist, but not sodden. Covered them with plastic. Stuck them in a sunny spot. In short, pea shoot heaven. Then I waited.

One Internet site predicted it would take four days, another said ten. I was diligent. A whole week of sprinkling, watching, waiting. Nothing. Nine days, still nothing.

Finally at day 13, up came not one shoot, but seven. A crop! They weren’t exactly green and curly, more pale and stiff, like bean sprouts, but what the heck? I gave them a big drink and covered them up again. I expected to harvest salad by the weekend. By March 17, a second crop. Two egg cartons at least.

Next morning four shoots had flopped over. The other three had produced gray fuzz. The rest of the crop…well, there wasn’t any.

Seven shoots? SEVEN? I called a gardening friend who knows about these things.

“You have two problems. Damping off, and mould.” Both my fault, he said. “Too much water. Start again. And lose that plastic cover thing.”

I had loved my pisum sativum to death.

I’m still determined to have pea shoots for St. Patrick’s Day. I know where I can buy a salad’s worth for about the same price as half a dozen exotic orchids.

Judy Schultz grows her own vegetables. Sometimes she’s successful.