Mushrooms and pea recipes

Something magical happened yesterday in the garden. Maybe it was the 88 degree weather or maybe it was the presence of the new Gardenia or maybe it was the rain from a couple of passing thunderstorms, but this morning presented me with some weird stuff in the garden.

Most notably, these mushrooms in the tomato plant pot:




Weird, right? I swear they were not there yesterday when I watered.

The pea plants are presenting me with a new challenge: how can you use a handful of pea pods on a regular basis? Today I added them to my leftover spaghetti for lunch:



More pea cooking solutions to come, I hope. In fact, that would be a great blog: "Things to do with 6 pea pods." Someone create that and I'll be your biggest fan.

Around the garden this morning...

I just ate a bunch of pea pods in a stir fry this weekend and these guys are already big enough to eat.

More and more leaves growing on the squash, which had a rough transition outdoors.

With the purchase of my Gardenia, I had a new container to fill. A couple of random cucumber plants now call it home.

The Gardenia loving its first morning at home.

Sneaky Peas.

Attention lovers of Where's Waldo?: feast your eyes on the following pictures and try to find some sugar peas.




Did you see them? Cause I water these plants everyday and I never saw them until yesterday. Sugar Peas would make good chameleons... here's a closer look:




Now it's not enough for dinner yet, but I think I will be taking a couple of these guys off the vine tonight to stimulate more pea production. Exciting news for the little garden that could...

Flower power

This morning I showed Chris how to water the garden while I'm away this weekend (Mother's Day) and just after he went inside, I yelled back to him. I had discovered some sweet pea flowers on the pea vines.





Looks like the cucumbers are trying to follow their lead:

Lessons learned in a garden

1. You can never grow enough basil.

New basil nursery in toilet paper rolls.

2. Environmental changes can cause plants to freak out... but once they get used to it, new (stronger) growth comes out.




3. There are going to be windy days. If you don't grow a strong stem, you're in trouble.

Sunflowers

4. New growth will use old growth for structure.

New sugar pea sprouts use older vines for support.

5. Gloxinia is a crazy, awesome plant.

Gloxinia mega-blooms.

The first ones out.

Last night I planted the peas outside and staked them with dowels and dental floss. Today, of course, it was windy and rainy. I've been worried about them all day.

Sugar Pea support line!

The Sugar Peas have grown too tall for their own good. Though some of them are leaning on the windows, some have found some more creative ways to stay up.

Tendrils getting itchy for some support.

Dental floss as a helper!

A little help from some friends.

Tight Grip.

Sugar Peas, you overachieving scoundrels!

So we all know overachievers. I'm one of them. This is probably why I love sugar peas so very much.

Here is how they start:

Sugar peas, 3 days old.

Then they're five days old and start showing leaves:



Then they're standing up straight and tall after six days:



Then they're a week old and growing tendrils:



Tendrils! In a week! I think you can see where this is going. The next step after tendrils is a little something I like to call "GRAB ONTO ANYTHING IN MY PATH." Which is why you can imagine I'd be a little worried when they all grew so big and so fast that they were in each other's way.

Sugar peas, 13 days old.

Sugar peas, reaching tendrils at 13 days old.

So yesterday I went on down to Dig and asked what I could do for my little buddies. The plan is to eventually have them wind their way around our railing, but there's another 27 days til the last frost. By then, they will have grown four times around the apartment and laced us to our cat. Luckily, the answer was easy: repot and give them something to aim for.

This is how I found myself repotting sugar peas at 10pm on a Saturday night. When I picked up their Jiffy pots to carry it over to the counter where the surgery would take place, I noticed something that I had never captured in a photo: ROOTS.



Clearly these guys needed some more space. So I moved them (Jiffy pot and all) into larger Jiffy pots, with the knowledge that they are going to expand in the pot, but the goal for the next four weeks is to keep their tendrils otherwise occupied. The guy at Dig suggested wooden dowels, but I found these pieces of wire in some old pots on our deck and figured they might work out ok.







Excited to see if they start wrapping themselves around the wire, but knowing sugar peas, I'll need to find another solution by this evening. Sugar peas, you scoundrels! *shakes fist at sky*