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Join Leaflet - February 2012 The Chef's Garden at Home
Join Leaflet - February 2012 The Chef's Garden at Home | The Chef's Garden at Home |
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by Betty Sanders
Are you a fan of oriental cooking? Chinese cabbage is as easy to grow as lettuce. Sugar snap peas are no different to grow than shelling peas and provide a different flavor. Japanese spinach Sharaku can be eaten from its baby stage until it's full grown. Tatsoi is a wonderful green that survives temperatures down to 15 degrees and can be eaten raw or cooked. Chinese rose heart radishes are white on the outside then reveal a red center when cut open. Unlike other radishes, they store well so you can enjoy them long after other varieties of radishes are gone. Do you prefer authentic Italian or French cuisine? Add a row of arugula and another of radicchio to your garden bed. Do you enjoy Rapini, also known as Broccoli di Rapa? This non-heading plant (which can go into the garden in April) is guaranteed to excite your taste buds with its pungent flavor. Fava beans have a wide variety of uses. Plant early and you can start picking in July and continue enjoying the beans until frost. Mache is French salad green with a fine nutty taste. Highly cold tolerant, it can be planted early and again in the fall. Leeks add wonderful flavor to many dishes. They can be direct sown as soon as the soil is workable. Have rocky soil? Parisian carrots, small and round, offer sweet flavor and the ability to grow well where other carrots will be misshapen. When you put the seeds in the ground, add a few radishes to the row to mark it. They can be harvested before they are large enough to interfere with the carrots. Plant a row of shallots at the same time for their mild onion flavor, a must in many French dishes. While you are perusing the seed catalogs, imagine how much easier it will be to get your children to help with the weeding if your garden is growing their favorite foods. A pizza garden offers the promise of a favorite meal with most of the ingredients coming from your own plot. This is a later season garden (plant in late May or early June) featuring tomatoes, zucchini, peppers, eggplants, basil, oregano and onions. Or, in May plant popcorn, the only corn not affected by corn borers, making success as easy as providing rich soil, adequate water and lots of sunlight. While we're talking about treats, think melons. Melon varieties like Sugar Baby need little more space than a zucchini plant but produce wonderfully sweet refrigerator-size watermelons. Melons need warm soil, lots of sunlight and water but will produce smiles from the whole family. I recommend you take a look at Johnny's Seeds of Maine, Pinetree Seeds, Burpee's, The Seed Saver Catalog ( for unusual and heirloom varieties) and the hundreds of others that offer ethnic vegetables. The wide variety of seed catalogs now available online make it easy to find even the most unusual vegetables. You can see a sampling of spring garden beds including uncommon vegetables at Mass Hort's exhibit at the Boston Flower & Garden Show next month. Starting in early April, check out this year's Chef's Garden beds in the Mass Hort Garden to Table vegetable garden. As soon as the soil has warmed sufficiently, we'll be planting and you can see what new varieties we've chosen for 2012. |
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