Garden Pests and Diseases: getting ate up, 1 by Night_Bloom

Night_Bloom wrote:
Snow peas and sugar snap peas are two different kinds of peas where you eat the whole pod as well as the peas inside. The difference is that with snow peas, you should eat them before the peas really start swelling - when the pods are mostly flat. Sugar snap peas can be eaten when the peas are a little bigger and the pod itself is thicker than that of snow peas, but they are generally sweeter. With these, too, you eat both the peas and the pod - I usually use them in stir fry or raw in salads, tuna-macaroni salads, or my hubby just goes out and snacks on them right off the vine. I'd provide a picture, but they have all gone by. They are a "cool-season" crop. I plant them as early as the end of February/early March here. They need cool soil to emerge and can even take a frost or two or three.

Yard long beans are a kind of Chinese green bean. They grow very long and thin and can be used in stir fries rather than having to boil them. As you can see from the ones in this picture, they aren't really a yard long (each tile is twelve inches), especially not this time of year. Earlier in the year though, they can get as long as the Chinese cucumber above the yard stick. The best time to eat the beans is when they are about 12 - 18 inches. I cut them into setcions and stir fry them, cook them with my long grain and brown rice, or in soup The cucumbers too also usually end up in stir fries, cooked with rice, or in soup. Even though I grew up in New England (I miss the seafood most; they can keep the weather) - I enjoy Oriental style cooking - I make stir fries a lot. The veggies I use just change depending on the season.

I'll keep my eye out for purple hull peas. I'll mark this thread, and if I can't find any for this area/climate, I'll send you an e-mail with my address for a few.