She Sits Among The Cabbages And Peas

I 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

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.

In 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!]