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Choose Something New to Grow this Year

Before we launch into this week’s article…

Gardening Classes with Henry

 Lebanon College: Gardening: A Practical Workshop. Garden writer Henry Homeyer will teach you the basics of organic vegetable and flower gardening. From garden design to seed-starting , planting, watering, weeding, mulching, and harvesting, this course will give each student practical knowledge of gardening. Tuesday nights from 6:30-8:30 for 5 weeks, April 3-May 2.Contact Lebanon College to reserve a spot for this5-part workshop www.lebanoncollege.edu or call 603-448-2445.

 AVA Gallery, Lebanon.  Henry will teach 3 classes at AVA Gallery this spring. You may sign up for one or all of these workshops:

Sculpting the Living Landscape: Starting Flowers from Seed
April 9; Monday, 6:30–8:30pm; One 2-hour class

Sculpting the Living Landscape: Perfect Perennials for the Upper Valley Garden
April 23; Monday, 6:30–8:30pm; One 2-hour class

Sculpting the Living Landscape: Organic Techniques for Enriching Soil and Managing Pests
May 7; Monday, 6:30–8:30pm; One 2-hour class

For more information go to www.avagallery.org or call 603-448-3117.

 Choose Something New to Grow this Year

       Spring is coming, spring is coming! The robins and red-winged blackbirds are back. Cardinals are singing their mating songs. It’s too early to do anything outside in the garden – or even for starting most things by seed indoors. But this is the time to make decisions, buy seeds if you haven’t, and plan. I want to offer some ideas about plants you may not usually grow – but should.
 
         

Kossack Kohlrabi - Image by Johnny's Seeds

       President George H.W. Bush hated broccoli. I can’t imagine why. Broccoli is not only tasty fresh, it’s great all winter if you freeze and store it properly. But maybe, if he reads this column on the internet (www.Gardening-guy.com), he’ll be willing to try one of the lesser known broccoli relatives that I grow and love. Happy Rich is one. Piracicaba is the other. Let me sing their virtues.
 
        Happy Rich is a hybrid green created by crossing broccoli with something called gailon or Chinese kale. According to the Johnny’s seed catalog (www.johnnyseeds.com), it is just 55 days to harvest and produces lots of florets that “have an excellent sweet broccoli flavor”. My standard broccoli, ‘Diplomat’ is 68 days to harvest – about 2 weeks longer.
 
       I love the flavor of Happy Rich – and the name, even though it has not, as yet, made me rich.  I sometimes eat the leaves and stems, too. They steam up nicely, and the stems don’t get woody the way broccoli stems do. And if you go away for a week and the florets turn into full blossoms, they are still tasty! It produces until late fall.
 
       Selected in Brazil for heat tolerance, Piracicaba (pronounced “peer-a-Cee’ca-bah”) is another broccoli-type plant that does not produce a big head, but produces lots of side shoots. It is like Happy Rich in almost all ways. I have grown it a few times, but never saved any seeds. My usual source doesn’t have it this year, but Google helped me find seeds: Hudson Valley Seed Library (www. seedlibrary.org) has it. This is a small seed company that values locally grown, open pollinated seeds. Membership (not required) is $25 and you get 10 packs of seeds free! I joined, and ordered lots of seeds, including some very interesting tomato varieties.
 

Salsify - Image by Johnny's Seeds

       Unlike Happy Rich, piracicaba is open pollinated: it is not a hybrid, so I can save seeds. Let me digress here for a moment: modern hybrid seeds often produce plants with desirable qualities. Hybrids are created by crossing 2 specific parents. But you can’t generally do this yourself, as often the parent plants are not commercially available. And controlling pollen flow can be complicated. But if a catalog calls a plant “open pollinated” or “heirloom”, you can save seeds –though some insect-pollinated heirlooms need a considerable distance between varieties to prevent cross pollination). Squashes and pumpkins, for example, hybridize to create the “monsters” growing in your compost pile.
 
       Rutabagas are wonderful root vegetables – I am still eating some from last summer. They look like turnips, but are sweeter and nicer. I’ve never had any pests or diseases on my plants, and they produce lots of food. I boil mine, and often mash them like potatoes, or use orange juice instead of milk for a slightly different flavor.
 
       Then there is kale. Some years I put 50 quart bags of kale in the freezer so that I can use kale in soups and stir fries all year. The great thing about kale is that, unlike spinach, it doesn’t lose its texture when frozen or cooked. I blanch the kale for about a minute in boiling water before freezing (so that the enzymes that cause aging are destroyed) and it tastes fresh and wonderful right from the freezer many months after picking.
 
       Kohlrabi is one more lesser-known vegetable you might want to try this year – I love it. It comes in both purple and green skinned varieties. It is a funny looking plant with stems coming out of the above-ground thickened stem that is the edible part. I like it raw in salads or cooked in a stir fry. Most varieties are baseball-sized and only 38-45 days to harvest. This year I am trying one from Johnny’s Seeds called ‘Kossak’ which is 80 days to harvest, but gets to be 8 inches in diameter, and keeps in storage for 4 months!
 

Scorzonera - Image by Johnny's Seeds

       Since I am advising you to expand your gardening and cooking palate, I will do so, too. This year I will plant salsify and scorzonera, two long, irregular-shaped root crops. Scorzonera has black skin and white flesh; salsify is white skinned and is sometimes called oyster plant. Thomas Jefferson loved it, and grew it in quantity – which encourages me to try it. Roots of both are 8-10 inches long, so it needs loose, deep soil, which I have. I found seed at Johnny’s Seeds and will plant some directly in the soil once it warms up.
 
       Cooking is the handmaiden of gardening. If you are adventurous in the kitchen, try some new veggies in the garden this year. If you discover an exceptional variety, please let me know! Just go to my Web site (www.Gardening-guy.com) to contact me.
 

Henry Homeyer is the author of 4 gardening books. His latest is Organic Gardening (Not Just) in the Northeast: A Hands-On, Month-by-Month Guide.