Kitchen Garden Forum

This may have been covered some time previously but I'm keen to try growing pea shoots to use in mixed salads and stir fries. Can I use packeted grocery dried peas for this? (The type you soak and cook for mushy peas?). And as they won't be growing tall, can they be successfully grown in shallow containers? I have a largeish 3 inch deep polystyrene box which was previously used for transporting fresh fish which might prove suitable but wonder if it would be too shallow? Do these dried grocery peas germinate when soaked or have they been treated in some way to prevent this happening?

Several times

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I had some peas last year that seemed to come up as mixed varieties so am using those up for pea shoots - great addition to salads.

I've been growing a small planter with peas in it with the school children. It's in the polytunnel and doing really well.

The aim is to pick the shoots for the kitchens to use in the lunchtime salads. They're about tall enough now and I plan to head back to the school later to harvest the first ones, so that the school dinner delivery lady can take them back to the kitchen for use tomorrow. It'll be interesting to see how much the 30 or so pea plants can produce. The children will be sowing some more next week.

VPM
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Dried peas for eating may not germinate - they may have been frozen to destroy pest infestation (it's preferred by some processors as the chemical fumigant is a very bad greenhouse gas and quite dangerous to use), and if the peas are organic they almost certainly have as the fumigant is forbidden. They may also not have been stored in optimum conditions to maintain seed viability (they are destined to be eaten not grown after all). There is nothing to stop you trying some on some wet kitchen paper, but I would buy some proper pea seeds.

I've grown them on a sort of commercial scale and done just what you're suggesting with containers - there is no need to waste loads of compost on them as you just want the shoots not a full blown plant.

As I said here viewtopic.php?p=91672#p91672 I used bought dried peas which always germinated 100% - though when I started I did use new Kelvedon Wonder seed.

Just to say that the shoots from our grocery packet of dried peas have been sprouting really well and we've been enjoying them in our mixed leaf salads. Have found the secret is to eat them fairly young before the shoots start toughening up. Still have loads left in the packet and this source is so much cheaper than buying packeted garden centre peas for ordinary growing.

But I really laughed yesterday because I told somebody about this and she said "That sounds nice. I must buy a tin of mushy peas and try planting some." It just shows that for some people the disconnect between the food we eat and its original source is pretty huge.

I got 100% germination from peas I buy for making mushy peas for our business - and at under £4 for 3kg, these must be some of the cheapest salads going!

Pennyroyal - do you reuse your compost when growing these shoots? I've got two plastic cat litter trays (without holes in the bottom) on the go with shoots at various stages and just a small amount of compost. i'm assuming that because the shoots are picked fairly quickly there might be enough nutrients left in the compost for grow a second batch.

I just used a standard sized seed tray - into which I planted 10 x 8 rows of peas. I would reuse the compost in other pots that will get fed, and use fresh for the next tray of peas - but tbh, it's not a lot of compost!

I buy the dried peas marked Bigga. I think they are the big marrowfat peas. I scatter sow them in a normal seed tray and after a few days signs of life appear. I let them grow to about 2 inches before cutting. Generally I cut about three times from each sowing so well worth trying.

Hi Primrose,
I would suggest that you could use the same compost over several sowings for the following reasoning.
When you sow the peas they germinate and it is the store of food that is within the seed that will feed them so to my mind the compost is there only to hold sufficient moisture for them to survive. As Hamsterhead has said you will get about three cuttings and then pull them up and start again but should you wish for more cuttings then the criteria may change and added enriched compost might be needed.
When I tried an experiment some time back I used Clive's Radeo Peas and having taken two cuts of shoots the third sprouting was planted out into the row without any untoward effects and later on a splendid crop of Peas.
JB.

Thanks for sharing that experience JB. We've just finished eating our first sowing of pea shoots (and an interesting addition to ours salads they were too!). I've just pulled out the roots and sown a second batch in the same tray so will see how they go. As a matter of interest I don't know whether I should have just left the roots in to start rotting down which might possibly have created a little more nutrition for the next batch. The only problem with this would have been that there might have been less room for the roots of the second batch to spread out.