Would You Believe in Berries Made of Straw?

Who's never seen an unripe strawberry? If you answered 'me', you won't be able to say that ever again. I mean, without lying. 'Cause here they are!

(click to embiggen)

Strawberries are very interesting because they don't typically spread via the seeds that coat the berries that we eat. Instead, they send out 1 or 2 foot long runners that have small plants at their tips. As soon as they find dirt, they root and become next year's supply of fruit. This is an evil and pernicious tactic of many weeds, but with strawberries, it's a good thing. Mostly because they taste good.

Hey, A Pea!

Yankee gardeners will have more experience with these things than I do. But for southerners, here's the rules: You plant these things next to a trellis on ~ January 1. Then you leave them alone for three months, and voila! You get two pea pods.



There's probably more to come. For those interested, these are 'sugar snap' peas, You can eat them pod and all, like snow peas, or you can just eat the peas. But they are not snow peas. That's a somewhat different animal, and you can't grow them in the lower third of the US. Snow peas are paper-thin, and sugar snap peas start off and stay about a quarter of an inch thick.

They're fun to grow, but like all vegetables, they pretty much taste like crap. Still, they are fun to grow...

UPDATE 5/6/09: This is a VERY prolific plant. According to my estimates, we've picked around 1.7 bazillion peas off of these three plants. I've also changed my opinion on their taste. If you sautee a cup of them with a tablespoon of oil and a good bit of salt for ~4 minutes, they taste quite good. Kind of like asparagus or boiled peanuts.