Top ten vegetable stories of last year
Results are in for the top ten vegetable stories of the past year. There was no rancorous debate, no filibusters, no stupid lies about the process… the garden is fair and abides us all.
The list goes roughly from Number Ten to Number One except there are ties, and it’s arbitrary to begin with, and there are eleven, so here goes…
10-9. Garlic is easy to grow if you have good soil, reliable unless you drown it, and it’s like Easter eggs at the end of spring to dig up all your bulbs. I started ten years ago with one bulb that had sprouted.
10-9. Kale deserves respect because if you take time to plant it, it feels obligated to perform, and it will reseed itself and be your friend forever. It’s very faithful.
- Somehow the gardener overlooked a packet of Purple Top White Globe turnips for 10 years. “Well, glory be!” he exclaimed and then sprinkled all the seeds on a small patch in a bed. Yep, every one of them sprouted, so the gardener transplanted dozens of them into little Stonehenge circles along the edge of the bed, and they responded. They keep well if kept cool.
7-5. Very strong, succulent deer tongue lettuce seedlings sprouted in the spring. Their seedlings sprouted in autumn. For at least four winters, I have kept a few plants alive through the winter to continue the cycle. On and on it goes.
7-5. Arugula follows a similar schedule as the deer tongue lettuce. This autumn, out of dozens of arugula volunteers, there were two plants at the northern edge of the thicket that had wide leaves at least seven inches long. The coldest nights a couple weekends ago froze all of them before the gardener put protection in place, so sayonara big fat arugula leaves.
7-5. Red onions fizzled last summer during the hottest days, but the bulbs rejuvenated when the weather moderated and produced a wooden bowl full of mid-sized pungent onions.
- Aunt Ruby’s German Green tomato, new to the garden, produced tasty beefsteak-sized green tomatoes. The answer to how do you know when a green tomato is ripe is it has a yellowish blush on the bottom when it is ready.
- Buerre de Roquencourt bush beans are yellow, tasty and prolific. Ask yourself ahead of time what you are going to do with so many beans. Beans for breakfast, beans for lunch. I froze a bunch.
- One holy basil plant grew into a small shrub which produced a pint jar of dried leaves. It is called Tulsi in India, and some revere it as the most sacred of all herbs. It’s remarkably medicinal, but before that the engaging aroma gets your attention. Great for tea.
- Italiko Rosso is a mildly bitter chicory that resembles a red dandelion leaf. I tried it because I live on the edge, and now it will be a regular. Produces like crazy toward the end of summer. Did not survive one of the most recent sub-twenty nights, but there is a chance the roots will survive and sprout new leaves in spring. So, I cut off the frozen leaves and covered that ground with a mound of leaves and compost.
- I was given some chicory seeds which I planted last spring, but I did not write down what kind they were. By mid-summer and continuing into autumn, I had a healthy stand of mildly bitter greens. The leaves were green, wide almost like a lettuce leaf, and late autumn weather turned the inner leaves red like radicchio. These plants also froze when the coldest night came, but maybe, just like Italiko Rosso, the roots, protected by mulch, will sprout in April. That would be outstanding!
There’s the list, doesn’t mean much, but now you might think about such and such.