If you consider fine food one of life’s pleasures, you are probably aware that there is no substitute for tender, succulent vegetables right from your garden.
Not only is the flavor finer when picked before it fully matures, but you can also plant better varieties, often neglected by commercial growers.
Their main interest is a big crop of kinds that will ship well. On the other hand, your main interest should be those that taste best.
For some strange reason, vegetables are generally treated as stepchildren in our country. As a result, they are often mushy due to overcooking and contribute very little to enjoying a meal.
In France, on the contrary, vegetables are served as separate courses except for potatoes. No soggy peas rolling around in the gravy of your meat!
No, indeed — tiny, sweet, and tender, they are served with all the aplomb they deserve and represent a far cry from the specimens usually served in our restaurants. Many people say they do not like vegetables, probably because they have never tasted good ones — well-cooked.
Yet these same people will go into ecstasy over a Chinese meal. This is because a very small amount of meat, fish, or chicken goes into most Chinese dishes.
But, in Chinese cuisine, a great many delicious and undercooked (therefore crunchy) vegetables are lavishly combined to make a savory and inexpensive dish.
For Winter Salads
Here is another point in favor of growing your vegetables. We are all affected by rising food costs, and the easiest way to beat them is to be your producer. This past winter, I priced endive (witloof chicory) in our market.
One pound was sixty-nine cents. It consisted of four short stalks, scarcely enough to serve two people. You can grow your endive and have a constant fresh supply of greens from one package of seed all winter.
No vegetable is easier to grow. Seeds are sown in the spring and produce long green tops. The plants are left in the garden until a killing frost takes the leaves. Then the long, pointed roots (somewhat like parsnips) are dug.
These are planted in a deep box in the cellar and covered with about ten inches of soil. In several weeks, the pale green heads emerge and are cut off just above the top of the roots. If the top is not injured in cutting, each root should produce two or three heads.
Then it is discarded and replaced by new roots. In this manner, your salad supply for the entire winter can be obtained from one package of seeds.
The lettuce you grow yourself does not resemble the tired and tasteless product found in the market.
Even the tiniest garden can produce a row of small and delectable types like Bibb and Oakleaf. Or try planting them as the French do in your flower garden.
Versatile Leeks
In any French garden, you will also find the ubiquitous leek, grown along with the flowers.
Leeks are deliciously used raw in salads or boiled and served with butter or hollandaise sauce. And they are the basic ingredient for that wonderful soup, vichyssoise.
We make and freeze quantities each year, but it is so good on a cold winter day that no matter how much we make, there is never enough left to serve ice-cold in the summer.
Peas
According to statistics, peas rank next to tomatoes as the most popular vegetable. But peas lose much of their sweetness and flavor unless picked and cooked immediately.
Although commonly grown in France, I have never seen my favorite variety, petit pois, in any market in this country.
Granted, they are a nuisance to the shell because the pods are small. They are prolific producers. Once you have grown them, I think you will agree that they are “tops” in flavor.
Corn
Corn is another outstanding example of the superiority of a home-grown vegetable. Unfortunately, within a few minutes of picking, the sugar content begins to change to starch, and thus flavor is lost.
Only those who have eaten young, tender ears picked a few minutes before dinner, then plunged into rapidly boiling water for three minutes — know what an epicurean delight corn can be!
It bears no relation to the commercially grown product that has kicked around for hours or even days before it reaches your table.
Last year we included Iochief, the 1951 Gold Medal Winner, and found it delicious and even more productive than Golden Cross Bantam.
The latter variety we have always depended on for our main crop to freeze, although we plant Spancross (extra early), Marcross (early), and Whipps Cross (midseason) to stretch the always-too-short com season.
If you do not have space for the above varieties, try Mason’s Golden Midget. This matures in less than 60 days and produces an abundance of small, tender ears, ideal for a tiny plot.
Asparagus
Asparagus, too, is only at its best when fat, tender spears are freshly cut. As a result, this vegetable is usually expensive, even at the peak of its season.
For those having sufficient space, it does require that an asparagus bed is a long-time investment.
Planted in rich soil and fertilized heavily each spring, an asparagus bed should produce luscious spears for 20 years or more.
You can cut it every day for six or seven weeks in the spring. We manage our supply this way — one day, we cut for the table, and the next, we cut for the freezer.
In this way, we aren’t deluged with asparagus and can freeze enough to last until the asparagus season rolls around again. Washington and Paradise are excellent varieties.
If you have always felt just “so so” about carrots, you will change your mind once you have eaten the Earliest French Forcing type.
I don’t believe this variety is ever available in the markets. It grows no larger than your thumb and is delicious to eat, raw or cooked — a splendid type to grow where space is limited.
Fresh From The Vine
Have you ever picked a fully ripe tomato that is still warm from the sun? To have tomatoes reach this peak of perfection, you must grow your own.
Market-grown tomatoes, like peaches, are always picked before fully ripening. So, naturally, these cannot compare in flavor with those from your garden.
In addition to Rutgers, Marglobe, and Pritchard, all of which are excellent for your main crop, try a plant or two of Jubilee with its orange-yellow flesh.
Your tomato crop can be used as a juice, soup, or stewed tomato, as all of these are excellent frozen products.
Beets
Most gardeners grow beets. These are delicious if picked when not much larger than marbles. The tops can then be used as greens, frozen, and packaged with tiny beets.
When beets have grown too large to use this way, they can be made.
44659 by Ruth Gannon Woodbury