Peas for free!
Add article to favourites
Mrs Green pops her sprouting peas in a pot
One of our readers (I’m really sorry I can’t remember who you are!) mentioned in a comment that she had planted some peas that were sprouting in her fridge.
I thought this was a marvellous idea and I’d never thought of it myself.
Lo and behold, a few days later I too had some peas that were sprouting in a pack in the fridge.
I have to admit to my shame that previously I would have thrown these away, but now, inspired by our lovely reader I popped them in a pot of soil.
I had nothing to lose right?
Well indeed not, and now, 4 weeks later I have a few shoots to show for my efforts!
I think I put about 8 peas in altogether; I’ve seen two pecked out by birds which I’ve pushed back down, but I have several healthy, looking plants.
Seeing as none of my peas had come up this year I’m thrilled to have saved the day at the 11th hour. Not only have I prevented food waste but I’m hopefully going to get an edible crop of something sans manmade packaging. What’s not to love?
How have you prevented food waste recently or enjoyed food for free?
Readers who viewed this page, also viewed:
Don’t throw it away… That's rubbish, just throw it away ... How many times have you heard that or said…
Contact Due to a high volume of emails, we have created an FAQs page. Please read through…
Mrs Green’s chocolate crunch (chocolate concrete) recipe Bringing back zero waste school memories with chocolate crunch recipe
Private: Zero Waste Week 2012 Welcome to the fifth National Zero Waste Week! National Zero Waste Week takes place week beginning…
How to reuse silica gel – 8 ways Ever wondered what to do with packs of silica gel? We've got 8 reuse ideas for…
Easy Related Posts
Tags: food waste
Sprouting peas in the fridge? I’d have eaten them raw – good excuse! My treat.
Have you tried eating pea sprouts? They come in the expensive salad pillow packs you can buy. The cheapest peas to sow are dried ones sold for eating. Pea sprouts are quick and easy to grow – and delicious.
Sorry I think they should probably be called pea shoots – ie the leaves. Although I eat the sprouts too. As I child I was to be found picking them off the plant and eating the nice small peas rather than the older ones that are often sold fresh in the shops.
The same thing works with ginger that has sprouted. 🙂
Chives. We have been growing chives for the past few years, and right now, they are abundant. Although a couple of them have been flattened by fox cuibs, Grrr… It saves us a bit of money each week, instead of having to buy them in store from a far away place.
I bought a bunch of mint recently, put it in some water to keep it fresh. The cut stalks put out roots and it’s now planted in a pot in my garden. Result!
Ooh and when your broccoli gets floppy and flabby, slice off the end, put that in water and watch it firm up. Like any flower, it needs to drink water to stay fresh.
And have I mentioned the amount of sprouting garlic I’ve planted after getting tired of throwing it away? And the potatoes that I harvest every year from my compost heap?
we always put our broccili in a glass of water, it keeps it fresh
I have to confess we’ve gone a bit backward in this the last couple of weeks because the very sudden hot spell did for my wormery and despite all our best efforts, the worms have all died 🙁 🙁
So I’m trying very hard to scrub vegetables where I would previously have peeled – carrots & potatoes especially – as my wrigglers munched all that up quite happily and now it just has to go in the bin. We do have compost but DH has noticed that if we put food scraps in, they are very quickly being eaten by the resident rats (there have been rats at the bottom of the garden for 40+ years my neighbour says) so we are trying to discourage this as much as poss by not composting our food scraps either.
On the upside, last year from a freecycler/freegler, we picked up a porthole window & surround that was no longer wanted – think domed porthole – and we’ve finally sorted ourselves out to use it as a cold frame 🙂
a nice bunch of celery pops up in the shade of house walls…i bury all stems, hard cores and hearts of green vegetables in a friendly humid place in garden—within 3 weeks, i begin to reap small leaves for salads or omelets, then larger stronger buds for soups—active producers are now green cabbage, red and green kale, romaine and curly endive and of course celery.
for seed production, i also bury one or two inch tops or stem of root veges and am now watching results coming into full seed…carrot, radish, turnip and 2 cabbages, the peas were also from imported garden (waste) i sifted them from compost material and kept them in cool place, they are still producing daily so i am saving some mature pods for next fall planting.
We, too, find potatoes growing on our compost heap from time to time, which have presumably grown from potato peel. One year, we mysteriously found a tomato plant growing in the garden and assume a bird or animal must have left a tomato pip in that spot. This year is an excellent year for dandelions, and, although we keep digging these up, we have had dandelion leaves the size of lettuce leaves which are excellent in salad.
In addition to the things that appear in our garden, we pick blackberries from nearby hedgerows in the autumn, and still have some of last year’s in our freezer. We had a lovely apple and blackberry crumble recently. In the spring, we pick wild garlic.
Ooh @Nadine that’s a great idea, hadn’t thought of doing that with my carrot tops. I remember growing them at school! And @Jane I hadn’t thought of eating the dandelion leaves from the garden….. that would embellish the salad leaves growing on the windowsill. Thanks for the ideas ladies!
@LJayne we have rats in the compost too…. apparently you’re never much more than a couple of metres from one in our neck of the woods……
I used to buy seeds. Now I try to use the ones from the food we eat. It’s working out pretty well so far. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t so I plant tons of them.