The Purposeful Pea Shoot

Every so often, you come across one of those vegetables and just think wow. And this is one of them. It’s probably one of the easiest vegetables to grow, equally happy on a windowsill or outside. It has great temperature tolerance, surviving both the cold winter and hot summer. If that doesn’t sell it to you, it takes ~3 weeks from sowing to harvesting, and each crop can be harvested multiple times. Even better – it’s a nitrogen fixer, meaning it even enriches the soil for the next crop. What a champion.

Specially bred for their delicious and funky-looking tendrils, this vegetable is a fantastic source of vitamins A, C and K, as well as containing lots of healthy minerals such as magnesium, phosphorous and iron.

The Purposeful Pea Shoot is our top vegetable for March.

Grow

Pea shoots are the young stems of certain pea varieties, grown close together and harvested young and tender.

They are minimal input – just soak the seeds for 24hrs before sowing to speed up the germination process. After that, scatter them close together across the pot, and cover with ~1cm soil. They should germinate within a week and grow happily from then on.

Harvest

When your pea shoots are 5-10cm tall, they are ready to harvest. You don’t want to leave them to grow too big, as they are best when the stems are tender.

Harvest by snipping clumps of them off at a time, making sure you cut the stems above the bottom two leaves. Leaving enough stem means you won’t kill the plants, and they will grow back for another harvest a few weeks later. You’ll be able to keep doing this for a few more harvests.

Eat

Often found in a tender tangle in hip cafés, pea shoots make a great addition to salads. They add a fresh crunch and subtle hints of pea to spruce up that bowl of greens. Try them with other microgreens, crumbled blue cheese and some diced pears.

Pea shoots are also great cooked, so you needn’t confine them to a salad. You add them to anything from stir-fries to pies - pretty much anything you’d add spinach to.

Looking to impress? Pea shoots make a smart garnish to add that flair to your cooking. Go pea on pea with this pea mousse dessert.