The sweet, tender young growing tips and curling tendrils of the pea plant. Taste like spring peas in green form — one of the cheapest, easiest, most generous grow-your-own crops there is.
Maybe the best value in all of grow-your-own: dried peas cost almost nothing, the shoots regrow after cutting, and the result is a sweet, tender, expensive-tasting green for pennies.
Pea shoots are loaded with vitamin C, vitamin K, folate, and carotenoids — a fresh green at a fraction of the cost of bagged salad. They regrow after cutting, so one tray of cheap dried peas can yield two or more harvests. Affordable greens are a public-health lever: pea shoots put vitamin-C-rich, iron-supporting produce within reach of any budget. Sprouting the pea also makes its folate and iron more bioavailable than the dry seed.
Grow from whole dried peas (field peas or speckled peas work). Soak overnight, sow densely on a soil tray, keep moist, harvest the top tender 2-3 inches at 10-14 days; they will regrow for a second cut. Eat raw in salads, or stir-fry hot and fast with garlic for 60-90 seconds — Chinese dau miu style. Wilts in seconds when cooked.
Free, no account needed to ask.