Arugula sprouting, with peas on the background.
All the seeds we planted in April at the Whole Earth Center are coming up — the arugula was the first to poke up a row bright green dots in dark brown dirt. The chard and kale brought up the rear but are now strongly under way, each about 1/2 or 3/4 inches tall.
The peas are standing tall at a sprightly six inches or so — waiting for me to get to work and give them something to climb. It’s coming! Some evening this week I’ll install a trellis made of two cedar posts connected at the top and bottom by horizontal pieces of metal electrical conduit, on which I’ll strong some twine for the peas to climb. Hard to picture from my description, I know — so stay tuned and I’ll post some pictures when it’s done. I’ll add a bit more detail about how to make them, so you can do it yourself.
Speaking of snow pea shoots, they were the featured vegetable in this month’s Garden State on Your Plate tasting at Community Park and Littlebrook elementary schools. The Princeton School Gardens Cooperative, with funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, has been pairing local chefs and local farmers to bring a fresh vegetable into the school cafeterias and talk with the children about where the food comes from and how they prepared it.
Bountiful Boxes recently donated a trellis to the Community Park School garden, so as children were tasting the pea shoots, they could look out the cafeteria window and see some that they planted themselves. The pea shoot salad recipe, created by Rob Harbison, chef at Princeton University, will soon be posted on the Princeton School Gardens Cooperative website.
The snow pea sprouts are ready for their trellis. If we had enough of them, we could eat them!
