Plant of the Day - Week 2
Green Power!! In the cabbage family, kale takes first place for nutrition. Like its distant parent, it's all leaves and all green, even a deep green approaching purple and black in some varieties. And the leaves are think and chewy with stored green power. Raw kale is even a bit bitter, maybe a promise of potency (the leaves sweeten with cold days in Autumn and early winter).
Green rebound! Dr. Terry Wahl, at the University of Iowa, lost her strength and mobility to multiple sclerosis in 2000 and got them back by changing what she ate. Kale was a big part of her recovery, by the cupful every day. Here's a summary of her story. Here's more about kale on the YGS Plant Pages.
Club Zucchini - The plant breeders have transformed the humble zucchini plant into a near-alien. It grows super fast, soon makes a big clump of spiky leaves, flowers early and continuously and the little squashes inflate fast, like party balloons. My neighbor Maureen showed me one from her plant yesterday that was big enough to make a T-ball bat. So what to do, aside from picking earlier? Grated, braised zucchini, zucchini bread, T-ball?
Picking zucchini young keeps the crop coming; the new flowers make new fruits. Picked young, zucchini can be steamed, sliced and sauteed, or blended into soup, hot or cold. When you saute slices they tend to weep a lot (young zucchini are watery). The remedy is to remove the slices when they’re cooked and simmer the water until it reduces to a succulent syrup. A little butter is good, or olive oil. Getting hungry. Here's more about zucchini on the YGS Plant Pages.
Hard Squash - Waiting for squashes to mature has risks. The stems wander and branch and take up a lot of room while the new flowers and baby squashes start up. A squirrel, maybe the same one that skins bark off the locust tree, found my plants one year right at harvest time and gnawed every squash just enough to shorten their life in storage. Grrr. A lot of garden time squandered. Ideas, anyone?
The next year, when the squashes were half-grown, I wrapped each one with a scrap of row-cover fabric, that wispy sort-of-gauze sold in garden shops. Zero squirrel trouble. By the way, covering the whole plant keeps away squash borers, those caterpillars that eat the inside of the stems. Row-cover foils other insects too--carrot flies, asparagus beetles. What else? Here's more about winter squash on the YGS Plant Pages.
This time of year--the height of summer--lettuce struggles, especially varieties with thin,tender leaves. Direct sun almost cooks them, and they ask the roots for more water than possible, unless you keep the soil constantly moist. Constantly. A bit of shade helps too. Two layers of row-cover fabric is enough. Just drape it on the plants. Really, lettuce prefers cool soil and temperatures. Start more plants now for Fall.
Lettuce sown in Spring is ready by mid-summer to shift from growing to flowering. It has its own schedule, controlled by age and heat. Up comes a flower stalk with wispy flowers (this event is called “bolting,” as if the plant were a runaway horse), the leaves turn bitter and soon wilt, and the harvest is over. Varieties with thicker leaves, Romaine types like ‘Barcarole,’ hold better in summer but also bolt eventually. Here's more about lettuce on the YGS Plant Pages.
- Categories // : Plant of the Day, August 2010
Comments (2)
I am growing Kale in pots on my patio in S. Paulo, Brazil. PS It is winter here.
Is Kale a traditional green in Brazil?