Good to know all these stuffs. Thanks for this thread.
Accidentally knocked a makrut lime off this morning. Might try to experiment a little with the zest, even if it might be bitter. I’ve been fighting with my cat for this all morning. He thinks it’s a new toy and is trying to roll this off the table, and I keep sniffing it every 15 mins.
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Look at those happy peas! Shrinkrap, have you ever grown some to use the plant tips (what chefs call “tendrils”) as a salad ingredient? They’re really good super quickly stir fried, but they shrink a lot. The best seed to use for those is Dwarf Grey Sugar Pod, which makes small snow peas. However, the seed is often inexpensive.
The lime looks fairly mature, Kobuta. The seed might grow into another magroot lime, but who knows how tough it is on its own roots; seedlings might be more cold sensitive. The zest has a pleasant, unique aroma and taste. Yours might be different than mine, but the pulp, what little there was, tasted awful. I had a bunch ripen about the same time and made Phrik Khing curry paste, Country Style, which includes pork cracklings. This from Victor Sodsook’s “True Thai” book. Dry frying the shrimp paste for that was a leap of faith; I thought for sure it would ruin the curry paste, but the smell disappeared in the final product.
The cat can still play with the smoother, zested fruit!
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Can’t you use the leaves - isn’t that what’s available at chinese restaurants as sautéed snow pea leaves?
I ask because I have tried to grow these three times now 
specifically for the leaves. This time I’ve got tiny snow pea pods, but the leaves are too small.
Gorgeous and lush!
I’m not going to complain that my plants are so measly given that they are still alive, vs the last 2 times… and also in spite of the gardener (butcher!) knocking them over and out TWICE.
A tiny harvest today, while watering various scattered things (the backyard is dug up so I’m back to manual watering).
A few teeny snow peas from the tiny plants, plus the last serranos from the plant - but I think I have revived it, because there are tiny leaves sprouting after I heavily trimmed dead stuff.
A few sprigs of mint from my lush replant into a dead tomato plant pot.
And some citrus - the Meyer lemon bush needed relieving, plus there’s a sweet lime in there, and a calamansi that I’m convinced has hybridized with the regular lemon tree because the fruit is suddenly oval after being squat and round until now. Is that possible?
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@Saregama ; nice haul! Do you do anything special with your lemons? I have some too. I know I should freeze the juice in ice cube trays, but I just don’t feel like it.
I tossed a bunch in a container with no spacing and labels, so I’m planning to use as tendrils. I believe I have Dwarf Grey, but I believe something discouraged me from planting them last fall. I can’t recall what.
Found them!
Here’s an orchid I bought last year at a grocery store!
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Ooo, I like that orchid!
There are more or less three pea plant food products which are not pod or shelled peas:
•Seeds planted in trays and grown in the dark to produce yellow, tender, sweet shoots, mostly tender stems with tiny leaf starts. Very pricey, yet easy to grow with no sun. I grew tons of them in a file cabinet! You do have to know what kind of soil to use and misting techniques to keep them free of soil.
•As above, but exposed to sunlight so they are green, with slightly larger leaves.
•“Tendrils” a chef’s/market term which I really don’t like because it’s misleading. Tendrils are the squiggly things vines make to grab onto something. Correctly, these are pea plant tips. Typically, they are clipped from young plants, maybe 8-10 inches (20–25 cm) high. You want young growth without a lot of fiber. The tips I harvested for years had the tip, one folded, immature leaf and one leaf which had just opened up. This left enough leaves on the plants so they could be tipped again in 2–3 weeks, and provided tender greens for salad or flash stir-frying. They shrink like mad when cooked, so if you don’t have a lot, go the salad route!
I just started peeking under the straw, at the radicchios, which have been covered for a bit over six weeks. As my Italian Nona would say: “Whata nice!”
Rossa di Treviso:
I cut loose a Variegata di Castelfranco head, which looks like a freckled, pale head of iceberg, until I opened it up inside!
These were nowhere near as bitter as before they were forced. Delicious with only a trace of bitter, easy to eat a big salad of them with a lemon vinaigrette. By the way, if you folks want a lemon vinaigrette recipe for those lemons, I came up with one which is very good and not too hard to make. Let me know and I’ll post it. It’s super on just about any salad, especially spinach.
An inch of ice just melted off yesterday. It’s remarkable these radicchios were growing during all the cold, cozy but chilled, under their straw blanket.
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So gorgeous!
Yes please!
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Also yes please!
For the vinaigrette, you’ll need:
1/2 cup fresh lemon juice, strained of any seeds
Lemon zest of two average-sized lemons-use a microplane for tiny shreds
2 teaspoons of Dijon (preferred) or Brown Mustard
1 medium sized garlic clove, pressed or minced very fine
Fresh ground, fine Black Pepper, to taste (optional, since you can put this on your food)
2 Tablespoons Wine Vinegar, white, red, or Champagne
2 teaspoons Honey (or more if the lemons are very sour-to taste)
1/4 teaspoon of dried Thyme leaves, rubbed in hands until mostly powdered.
1/2 cup of olive oil
The easiest way to make the vinaigrette emulsion is with a Immersion blender, but one can use a blender or even a whisk. Put the oil in a large measuring cup or something easy to pour out of and set it aside.
I’ll proceed as if a immersion blender is being used.
Combine everything except the oil in a small metal bowl, deep enough to hold everything with enough space to control splash. Mix these ingredients at a lower speed, with the immersion blender, until the honey is dissolved, mustard is broken up and it’s homogenous.
With the immersion blender on med. or high (depends on the model) in the juice mixture, slowly drizzle a thin stream of olive oil into the bowl to create an emulsion. Once everything is thoroughly emulsified, it’s done. It does not take long at all. Taste and adjust honey, if needed.
For cleanup, pour the vinaigrette into a glass jar and rinse off the bowl and immersion blender blade/shaft section. Put a bit of soapy water back into the bowl and run the immersion blender in the dish soap on high to clean it, rinse off detergent.
I usually double the above recipe because it’s so good and keeps for days in the fridge. Lemons vary so much in size and tartness, you may need to adjust quantities. With the med.-large lemons I’m buying, it takes about three lemons for a single recipe.
This vinaigrette is also good on tuna salad or fish. I bet it’d be good on cooked greens, green beans, Brussels Sprouts and more.
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Thank you! How long is it good for?
I see tiny chives coming up under the melting snow!! So exciting.
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I’ve kept the Lemon vinaigrette for up to five days, in the fridge. It’s pretty acidic, so it should keep a week or more, depending on how cold your fridge is. I’ve been using it up, usually within a few days, due to the quantity of salads being made.
Regarding the companion planting: I did a bunch of experiments to see if certain plants would repel or reduce insect attack. These were controlled trials, with things like cabbages planted next to cabbages and cabbages planted next to repellent plants, planted the same year, same area, soil, etc. I found zero protection from “repellent” plants. In fact, the cabbage worm population was higher in the repellent group than cabbages planted next to cabbages. Why? Insects are very good at finding their host plant. Scent and vision based on a very different visual spectrum allows them to zero-in, regardless of other plants’ scents.
If a female cabbage butterfly is looking to lay eggs, it sees a limited target if a cabbage is surrounded by aromatic herbs. If a bunch of cabbages are present, she has to choose one. I watched the butterflies kind of randomly fly about, and descend to lay. Often, successes with insect repellent companion plantings is based on outside factors, such as natural swings in pest population cycles or predatory insects.
There are plenty of other reasons companion planting can be valuable, as the article states, especially legumes adding nitrogen to the soil. However, thinking that living legumes will supply all the nitrogen something like corn will need is misguided. That’s because the legumes have nodules in their roots which house e.g.: Rhizobium bacteria; these make the nitrogen for the plant. The legume does not leak out nitrogen until the plant dies and decomposition releases it. Much of the formed nitrogen ends up in, say, the beans or peas you eat, so it does not return to the soil in the garden, (unless one uses “night soil”).
It’s a very complicated subject, made more complex by one’s location, climate, local microbes, insects, varieties planted and more. In some cases, such as with nematodes, marigolds can exude soil chemicals antagonistic to nematodes. There are also fungi which are “carnivorous” underground webs, which form lassos that trap nematodes. Various leaf mulches can encourage these fungi.
The best strategy I’ve seen is to have a lot of mixed, native flowers and plants nearby. If there’s food for predatory insects in a nearby area, they can move into a garden space when they find the target prey. In some cases, this can work against you: wild black raspberries harbor a virus which is spread by native leafhoppers and thrips. If these insects attack your raspberries, they can become infected and stop producing fruit. Wild plums on the East coast can provide a reservoir of Plum Curculio beetles, which will move in and attack peaches, plums, nectarines, etc.
Plant, experiment, read and learn. An article or book cannot tell it all. We’re all apprentices. We learn, but the lessons are from a limited snapshot in time. As things change, the old lessons may have to join new strategies. After a long apprenticeship, growing becomes more art than science; intuition plays a bigger part. Sometimes, there’s no explaining how this happens.
Many springs ago, I had planted over a hundred pepper plants and about fifty tomato plants, in 2 inch pots, planning on putting in the usual huge garden. I kept getting this sinking feeling a massive drought would come in the summer. When a good friend, fellow gardener came to visit in April, I told him to take whatever plants he wanted, I decided not to plant anything that year as a premonition of drought was gnawing at me. He thought it very odd, since we had been getting normal rain.
By August, we were in the worst drought in 35 years. The creek I used for irrigation dried up and there was no way to water. A very curious coincidence.
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All my leaf cabbage plants got eaten by a small deer a few days ago. Looks like vegetables are not for me. lol.
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Aww, but your deer are thankful… Not too late to re-plant.
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I saw a funny cartoon from the New Yorker today.
Perfectly encapsulated my current feelings.
I have tomato seeds (from what we are eating that I like) in little bowls on my dresser, plastic cups with seedlings (graduated from the bowl situation a few weeks ago) in a baking tray on my back heating mat - all as I am mentally preparing to head back home in the next month.
Yesterday I walked around and fertilized all the plants I saved before the yard was dug up (using “homemade” compost and plant-specific fertilizer) and then massively pruned all the citrus trees and bushes (that are in planters) to get anything dead or infected (soot!) off so they can have a fighting chance after I leave.
Bittersweet, as I know travel will not allow me to grow much when I get home to nyc this summer.
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My gosh, those are beautiful, and beautifully photographed, as well.
I’ve never been able to bring myself to cook pea tips, I make a salad out of them or just eat them by the handful right out of the salad spinner. They’re so good- next year I’m going to get some dwarf gray sugar pea seeds for the greens.
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