Peas

This half packet of dried marrowfat peas has been lurking at the back of a cupboard for too long.

This mealy variety is normally eaten fully mature, but I'm sure they will also be able to be picked early for pods and green peas.

I wasn't too sure these peas would germinate, as the printed packet expiry date was about 18 months ago - so I soaked a few of them for a day in water.

More than three quarters of them looked nice and healthy green when soaked, and began to show signs of an emerging root - so I think they'll be fine.

I prepared a seed bed for the peas - consisting of a raked depression about an inch deep - and scattered in a generous number of dried peas.

I covered them over with a thin layer of soil and tamped it down gently with the rake.

I covered the sown seed over with fleece - to help keep frost and cats off the cultivated soil.

02 April 2010 - the first shoots have started to appear through the soil.

I'm leaving the fleece on for the moment, but I'll soon have to add some twigs or netting for the plants to grow up and cling to.

08 May 2010 - I pushed some twiggy sticks into the ground near the seedlings, and they have begun to get their tendrils wrapped around them.

27 June 2010 - The peas have made good progress and have been flowering for a while - they've already produced a good crop of pods - some of which are getting quite plump.

The peas inside the fattest pods are still a bit too small to harvest (they're delicious eaten raw in the garden though).

Up until about this stage, the pods can be picked and eaten whole - any older and they'll start to get tough and stringy though.

My potatoes have all been harvested and eaten now - leaving a vacant spot in the vegetable patch.

Here at the tail end of June, it's still not too late to start a second crop - so I've sown peas into this space for autumn picking.

To give them a good head start, I soaked the dried peas overnight before sowing them.

At the start of July, the pods were all really fat and the peas inside well developed - maybe a little too far on to be eaten as green peas, but these are marrowfat peas, so I do want them quite mealy, for the recipe I have in mind...

After shelling, there was maybe a quarter pound of peas - hardly an increase on the number I planted, however, they were very old peas, so the germination rate was pretty patchy.

Anyway, I boiled them for only a few minutes and they were completely tender, but still brilliant fresh green.

I smashed the peas in a bowl with the end of a rolling pin - just until they were broken, not mashed, then I mixed them together with crumbled Stilton and served it up as Pea and Stilton brushetta, garnished with a few thin slices of shallot flower stems, also from the project garden (they're getting everywhere, these shallot rings).

This was a really delicious way to enjoy the harvest.