What is a vegetarian?

[Serial_Apologist]

St Sprees

Is s/he a relative of the other retail saint St Schmichael of Sparks, by any chance?

OG

[jean]

Mung bean sprouts and alfalfa sprouts have been around for ages - what took peashoots so long?

[oddoneout]

[QUOTE=french frank;591031]How long do they take to shoot until harvestable, ooo? Does one buy a packet of ordinary peas (when available) to use?[/QUOTE

I reckon about 3 weeks, and I use(whole!) dried marrow fat peas as they are readily available and cheap.Others suggest using dried peas from Asian supermarkets - but not everyone has access to such emporia. Overnight soaking speeds things up a bit but isn't essential - it does make spacing easier though as the seeds have reached maximum girth and are less likely to shoulder each other out of the way when they start growing. I avoid ordinary garden pea seeds because of the risk of seed dressings having been applied and also because I've found the culinary ones seem to produce better quality shoots. With care and a modicum of luck there will be several pickings from one planting - it's not a one-shot-pot like mustard and cress.

[oddoneout]

Mung bean sprouts and alfalfa sprouts have been around for ages - what took peashoots so long?

I don't know, but they aren't the same thing. Pea shoots need some sort of growing substrate and take much longer, whereas sprouted seeds just need a container and a few days.

[french frank]

I don't know, but they aren't the same thing. Pea shoots need some sort of growing substrate and take much longer, whereas sprouted seeds just need a container and a few days.

I suppose they are more like cress which is sort of in between shoots and germinated seeds.

The farmer who used to supply my vegetables also sold sprout tops which are extremely nutricious. I'm sure people who grow their own have been eating them for ages, but you don't often see them in the shops.

[Beef Oven!]

So have I, as part of a voluntary project I'm involved with to mentor people who want to grow their own veg. I've developed various methods of growing them according to circumstance, and run demonstrations at events etc. The last one I did a few weeks ago proved somewhat challenging as the participants were dementia sufferers....
The flavour can be modified to a degree by controlling the amount of light the shoots get - a certain amount of etiolation makes for sweeter crisper shoots(which I personally prefer) which is useful for windowsill production in winter.

A family friend used to grow them on his allotment, but sadly he passed away a few years ago. I have grown them in a window box on a balcony in the past, but they didn’t taste as nice. I like them very strong-tasting. I also used grow mustard and cress, for years. Don’t know why I stopped - I adore the stuff.

[oddoneout]

I suppose they are more like cress which is sort of in between shoots and germinated seeds.

'Micro-greens' - becoming very trendy now, but useful for winter/windowsill growing.

The farmer who used to supply my vegetables also sold sprout tops which are extremely nutricious. I'm sure people who grow their own have been eating them for ages, but you don't often see them in the shops.

Markets are the place to find them, now attached to the complete stalk of sprouts, something which iscreeping into supermarkets I see, clingwrapped. An indication of how far the plant breeding has come on that the sprouts all reach the right stage at the same time to make whole stalk harvesting feasible - and desirable presumably as easier and cheaper to harvest than frozen fingered repeated picking over plants.