garden pathways
Growing Unusual Veggies Just because we live in northern New England doesn’t mean we have to subsist on carrots and potatoes. These familiar vegetables grow well for us despite our cool nights and relatively short summers. But so do tomatoes, a warm-climate vegetable, and other frost-sensitive vegetables like summer squashes, beans, and cukes. What we grow is largely what we know—and what our Grannies grew—but it doesn’t have to be this way. I grow artichokes, piricicaba, kohlrabi, and plenty of other less common veggies that are more commonly found in California—or at a farmers’ market in New York City. You, too, might like to try a few new flavors in your garden this summer. uuu
By now (early June) it’s too late to start artichokes from seed. I start mine in February, as they take a long time to reach maturity. But some garden centers sell them already started and ready to go in the ground. Artichokes are big plants that require as much space as tomatoes; I plant them 24 inches apart. They need plenty of moisture and deep, rich soil. Before planting an artichoke, I work in a heaping shovel of compost and half a cup of organic bagged fertilizer. And if we get a dry spell, I water my artichokes to be sure their soil stays moist. Artichoke leaves are a grayish-green, making artichokes pretty enough to plant in a flowerbed. The artichokes we can grow here will never be as large as the grocery-store varieties,
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though. Be sure to harvest before the petals on the buds get dry and tough. After you pick the first one, you might get three or more smaller ones as side shoots. Perhaps the first President Bush, who stated his aversion to broccoli, would actually enjoy a couple of the broccoli relatives that I grow—piricicaba and Happy Rich. (Actually, I think he probably just suffers from OBS—overcooked broccoli syndrome.) Both of these broccoli relatives are sweet and delicious, and can be eaten straight from the plant—unlike broccoli raab, which is bitter if eaten raw. They are fabulous lightly steamed or sautéed. And the nice thing about them is that the leaves and stems are tasty, too. You probably won’t find either for sale as plants, but they are fast growing and start easily from seed, either in the soil or in 6-packs in the house. Piricicaba seeds are found through Fedco Seed Cooperative . Happy Rich, like piricicaba, does not form a big head the way broccoli will, but its flowers are plentiful and produce well into the fall, shrugging off frost. I get seeds from Johnny’s Selected Seeds. Essentially, both of these plants forgo the head and start producing what we would call side-shoots on broccoli. But even if you miss harvesting some florets on time, they do not get bitter. Just pick them, eat them, and you’ll get more. I’ve never had much luck growing celery. It has gotten tough and woody, or else the slugs have gotten to it. But a celery relative, celeriac or celery root, provides the same flavor
Illustration by Meg Lucas
by Henry Homeyer