On peas, summer storms, and me

When it comes to growing food, one has to give up rigid standards of perfection. Just a few days ago, I was proudly boasting about my towering 7’ tall sugar snap pea plants. While I was waiting for my camera batteries to charge so I could document that achievement, the first summer storm blew in, with two days of high winds along with the rain. The pea stalks bent, and many are now lying along the ground. We’ll tie them back up when the plants dry, but that “perfect” photo remains only in my imagination.

Fortunately, though, even with bent stems, the peas are still producing – about a pound per day. That’s more than enough to feed us, and our friends as well. Snap peas turn us into “browsers,” as well as gatherers. A fair number get eaten right in the garden. But plenty still make it into the house.

For those, my favorite recipe is to steam them for about a minute, then marinate in a mix of tamari (soy sauce), balsamic vinegar, sesame oil, and a splash of white wine vinegar as well. I use a ratio of about 5 Tbs: 4 Tbs: 1 Tbs respectively for about 1.5 pounds of peas. A generous handful of chopped spearmint, and another handful of chopped dill, and they’re done.

Still, the pea crop is just starting, so I went looking for some additional options this morning. I found a recipe for pickled sugar snap peas and another for an Indonesian-inspired stir-fried beef with snap peas and peanut sauce. I look forward to trying them soon.

Snap peas are one of spring’s great treats. And because they grow vertically, they take very little room for the amount of food they produce. A row of snap peas will fit in the back of almost any sunny flower border, alongside the sunny side of a shed, or in a foundation planting, growing up on a temporary wire trellis.

Commonly, people think they need a lot of space to produce any significant quantity of food. Friends who visit are often surprised at how much food and flowers we support in an area no bigger than many suburban lawns. Some days, I’m surprised too. But I’m also learning that we could do it with even less space if we had to. Or, in our case, that we could still increase the amount of food we are producing, feeding not only ourselves, but some of our friends besides.

Part of that is building up the soil enough to support dense plantings. Part is improving my timing at succession planting – pulling out plants that are past their prime and immediately starting the next crop in the same space. Or even overlapping crops. This morning, I pulled out the spinach plants that were starting to bolt. Some weeks ago, I planted string beans (a bushy variety) between some of the spinach and early lettuces. The beans are starting to really leaf out just as the spinach and lettuces are starting to bolt; with the latter greens gone, they will have all the room they need. Once the rains stop, I’ll plant something else – perhaps more carrots – in the rows where the remaining spinach was.

Similarly, for now, the snap peas are towering (or falling!) over the tomato plants in one bed and the zucchini and yellow squash in another. But by mid-July, when the summer veggies really need the extra room, the peas will be done. And I’m hoping the nitrogen-fixing pea roots will have given the heavy feeding tomatoes and summer squash an extra boost.

Finally, the almost-ready-to-bolt spinach I pulled? It went into this morning’s breakfast: spinach and garlic scallion scrambled eggs from the chickens our neighbors raise down the road, fresh strawberries, and, of course, some sugar snap peas.