Seeding has begun at our house.
Not wheat and canola, but vegetables and herbs that are started indoors this time of year so that they’re ready for the great outdoors when the snow disappears and the weather warms up.
That means our almost weekly trips to the garden centre have also begun.
It’s an interesting place to visit because you never know what you might find.
Last year, while my wife was trying to decide on the best tomato variety, I stumbled across peanut seeds. I took the bait, and an interesting adventure ensued as we attempted to become peanut farmers.
Read Also
Agriculture needs to prepare for government spending cuts
As government makes necessary cuts to spending, what can be reduced or restructured in the budgets for agriculture?
It didn’t work, even though all the literature assured us it could be done in our climate. We ended up with four hard, little peanuts that we didn’t even try to eat because we got scared off after I started reading about potential mould problems when drying the legume.
My wife thought we should try again this year, but one crop wreck was enough for this fair-weather gardener.
However, it didn’t stop me from continuing to look for something new, and this year’s first trip to buy seeds unearthed some interesting discoveries.
Asparagus peas were one such find. The picture on the seed package didn’t look like asparagus or peas, which made me curious.
Turns out, this vegetable doesn’t have much to do with either one. It’s a legume that produces pods that need to be picked when they are one to two inches long.
One writer described it as “one of the prettiest vegetables on the planet.”
My other discovery wasn’t much of a discovery at all.
Sitting between the coriander and the dill, the packages of dandelion seeds left me a little stunned.
I realize that dandelion greens can make a nice addition to a salad, but it had never occurred to me that someone might voluntarily grow the stuff in a garden.
I guess that if you’re better than I am at keeping dandelions out of your lawn and you want to eat dandelion greens, then growing them yourself might be your only option.
It was still a bit of a shock, though.
In the end, we decided not to grow asparagus peas this year. As for dandelions, we probably won’t be so lucky.
