Thursday 9 June 2011

She Sits Among The Cabbages And Peas

living saladI recently lamented my lack of gardening skills, and one friend suggested I try growing salad leaves – assuring me that it was very easy.

I haven’t done that yet – but I did buy one of those ‘living salad’ boxes [reduced to half price] in the supermarket about three weeks ago. We enjoyed fresh leaves in our salads for quite a few days. When all the leaves had been eaten, I was reluctant to throw away the ‘growing medium’ [compost – but full of lettuce roots] so I tried an experiment.

I turned the matted rectangle over in its plastic tray, and poked holes in it with a chopstick. Then planted a dried pea in each hole.

Voila! a crop of pea shoots

DSCF1745

I watered them well before going to Cornerstones, and we returned to this splendid crop a week later. I have been cutting a few and adding them to salads, and plan to use some in a simple pasta dish with some frozen peas. Cost – about 4p!

Feeling pleased that I have grown something, and it is edible and it cost next to nothing. My Boy Scouts tomato plant is still alive. Maybe this will be the summer that I get to grips with horticulture after all.

marie llloyd plaque hackneyIn case you are wondering about the title of this post, it was a song made popular by the music hall artiste Marie Lloyd. Moralists objected to the double entendre – so she changed it to “She sits among the cabbages and leeks”

[quite why my grandfather- the most moral person around – told me this when I was about 7, I really cannot fathom. But it certainly made me giggle!]

4 comments:

  1. Well done with the gardening :)I knew you'd do it!
    I hadn't got the double entendre til you said - duh!! Now I shall be grinning all day as I remember it - thanks - I needed that :) Oooohh that could be my reason to be cheerful :) LOL!!
    L.x.

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  2. I'm not altogether sure that the 'cleaned up' version is any better!
    Jane x

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  3. I grow pea shoots to go with my baby homegrown salad leaves because I love a mixed salad. Two (different) 29p packets of Lidl lettuce seeds and half a pack of 29p Batchelors dried peas kept us in salad leaves for over three months last summer. So naturally we are doing it again this year. I found that if I cut the pea shoots off just above the first set of leaves then each pea plant grew another smaller set of shoots - thus making it even cheaper per meal... I plant a small spoonful of peas every weekend and they are doing great : )

    My tomatoes were rubbish last year but they look more hopeful this summer so maybe we'll be able to have a meal of totally homegrown egg salad with a few chives and parsley and whatever else I can find ready to eat. It would give me a great deal of satisfaction to eat a totally homegrown meal. Maybe I ought to investigate growing coffee beans too.....

    Jo (smallholderwannabe)

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  4. Funny! See? There you go, farmer Angela!

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