I showed my garden a few weeks ago to a friend of mine, who happens to be 3 years old.
The peas were just beginning to fill their pods so I picked one, split the shell open and offered him a taste.
He found the peas to his liking, so his mother and I picked more peas and fed them to the boy. He enjoyed them so much that hours later, his father declared that he had eaten all the peas that were ready now and that he would have to wait for more to grow before he could eat more.
So the boy stood there looking at the garden.
"I'm watching the peas grow," he told his father. "When they're ready, I can eat them."
It turns out he was onto something.
About a week later, I went to the garden to gather The Great Pea Harvest. I was turning recipes over in my mind and looking forward to basking in the success of my first vegetable from this year's garden.
I cracked open one of countless heavy pods and popped some fresh peas into my mouth. Yuck.
These were not the sweet, crisp peas from a week ago. These were starchy and bitter. I looked closer and noticed the shells were a little wrinkled.
I tried some peas from a different plant. Same problem. I tested a few more until I couldn't stand the taste anymore.
What happened?
I thought maybe it had something to do with that heat wave in early June. Peas like cool spring weather. Summer heat shrivels up the pods. Yet we ate those sweet peas after the heat wave was over.
I called the Massachusetts Horticultural Society's free Help Line, 617-933-4929, to see if one of their master gardeners had a suggestion.
The gardener, Diana, asked me if I was picking the peas soon enough. She said the time to pick peas is as soon as they're reasonable sized.
"That's the thing with peas," she said. "They taste much better if you pick them just as they're ready."
Meanwhile, my young friend has been following his green thumb instincts in his home garden, where peas are now thriving. His mother reports that he eats the peas, shell and all, as soon as they're even close to being ready, perhaps even earlier.
For a kid who doesn't like many vegetables, that's not bad.
I, on the other hand, have been thinking about following his lead and standing in the backyard watching my other vegetables grow, so when they're ready, I can eat them.
The blossoms have opened on the zucchini and yellow squash plants. Those are certainly vegetables that can get unruly and unappetizing if left on the vine too long. And the lettuce is probably going to bolt before I ever make a salad.
As for the peas, I'm not too sad. That's just how gardening goes.
At least we ate some while they were good. And at least I have the memory of a little boy eating his peas and dutifully carrying each pod all the way across the yard to the compost pile; a little boy who is growing faster than those vines.
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Julie Kirkwood is a freelance writer for The Eagle-Tribune. Her column, Yard Dirt, appears most Wednesdays. She also keeps a gardening blog, Yard Dirt: Sharing Seeds, at www.eagletribune.com.
