Growing Your Own Vegetables: An Encyclopedia of Country Living Guide (12 page)

Sow turnip and rutabaga seed ¼ to ½ inch deep, with 1-inch spacing in all directions. Thin turnips as they start to crowd, harvesting the thinnings for “baby” turnips, and work toward an eventual spacing of about 6 inches. Rutabagas will stunt if they are crowded; they should be thinned to 8 inches apart. Maintain soil moisture during the growing season for tender roots.

HARVESTING:
Scratch the soil away from the tops of the roots to gauge size. Dig turnips beginning when they are about the size of a golf ball but no more than 3 inches in diameter. Rutabagas can get much larger without losing their quality. In mild winter areas both may be left in the ground in the fall and dug as needed. They will tolerate light frost, but repeated freezing and thawing will spoil the root.

Other Nonstarchy Roots

Jerusalem artichoke
(
Helianthus tuberosus
) is a hardy perennial in the sunflower family; it has a characteristic golden blossom with a dark eye. Alternative common names are
crosne du Japon
, girasole, Japanese artichoke, sunchoke, sunroot, winter artichoke, or just plain choke—even though it’s not a relative of the globe artichoke at all. Chokes are prolific growers whose tall plants can reach 8 to 10 feet. They do not suffer from insects or disease and can hold their own against any weed, but their growth must be contained or they will take over the entire garden. The crunchy white tubers of mature chokes are harvested throughout the fall and winter when the plant is dormant; any tuber left in the soil will multiply and increase to provide the following year’s harvest.

Jicama
(
Pachyrhizus erosus
) is a Mexican vegetable also called
sincama
,
sa gord
, yam bean, Mexican potato, and Mexican water chestnut. Jicama resembles a flattish turnip in both its shape and its sweet, crisp white flesh. They grow best in southern, frost-free zones, where you can harvest as needed for months, and individual tubers may get quite large. However, gardeners everywhere except the most northern tier of states can grow tubers weighing at least ½ pound.

Salsify
(
Tragopogon porrifolius
) and the closely related
Scorzonera
(
Scorzonera hispanica
) are both grown for their long slender roots—white and black, respectively. Somewhat difficult to prepare in the kitchen, with a curious oyster-like flavor, these roots are not commonly grown. Cultivate as for parsnips, concentrating on cool-season growing. The flowers of mature plants are beautiful in their own right, pinkish purple (salsify) and bright yellow (scorzonera) blossoms that are a good addition to spring salads. However, do not allow the plants to set seed, as they can become invasive and weedy.

GRASSES AND GRAINS

T
he grass family is basic to supporting all animal life on earth. Green grass is pasture; dried grass is hay. The edible seeds of corn, wheat, rye, barley, rice, oats, and flax grasses provide grain, a rich food for both people and livestock. Millet, amaranth, quinoa, and buckwheat are nongrass plants whose highly nutritious seeds are harvested and consumed as “grain.” Bamboo is a grass whose young shoots are harvested as a nutritious vegetable.

Raising your own grain may require less space than you think. Producing even a small crop of grain is not only a gardening adventure but also an instructive exercise concerning a food we typically take for granted yet is central to most people’s diet.

WHEAT

Backyard wheat

Wheat (
Triticum
sp.) has been cultivated for the last 10,000 to 15,000 years, beginning in the Tigris, Euphrates, and Nile valleys. It’s a good basic grain to plant. A decent crop of wheat can be produced in your own backyard if you have the right conditions and protect the tender stalks from trampling by dogs and people.

PLANTING:
Wheat thrives where a cool, damp growing season is reliably followed by dry, warm days for ripening and harvest. Prepare a rich soil in full sun—conditions similar to those that would produce a good crop of corn. Broadcast seed by hand or plant in rows 4 inches apart, going back over the plot and raking to cover the seed with 1 to 2 inches of soil. Spring wheat may be sown around the time of the last killing frost and germinates best when temperatures are in the 60s. Winter wheat is planted in the fall and sprouts before going dormant with cold temperatures; growth resumes in the spring as the soil warms. Delayed plantings of either winter or spring wheat will reduce yield, as summer heat depresses grain production.

HARVESTING:
Wheat is one of the slower grains to mature; it is ready to harvest when the plants have grown tall and are topped with bushy heads filled with grain seeds and the straw is just turning yellow. Winter wheat is ripe in midsummer, around 40 to 50 days from when the wheat begins to “head.” Spring wheat will ripen in the fall. Harvest on a dry day, even waiting until the dew has dried. If it rains, you must wait until the grain gets completely dry again. But if you leave the wheat too long, the heads will shatter and spill the grain onto the ground. Cut, bind and tie (instructions follow) and shock to cure. Then thresh, winnow, and store. Grind as needed.

How to bind and tie a sheaf of wheat:
Harvest a good-sized arm-load of cut straw, about 8 to 12 inches in diameter, with the grain heads all facing in the same direction. Wrap the sheaf with a handful of stalks just below the grain heads. When the band is tightly drawn around the bundle, give the two separated ends a half twist to unite them, and tuck the resulting single “rope” under the band to keep it from coming loose; this is called a
binder’s knot
.

GRAIN VOCABULARY

Chaff
—the outer seed hulls of the grain that must be removed before grinding or storing. Compost the chaff or use as mulch in the garden.

Flail
—a flat stick used to pound the seed heads on a hard surface free of cracks that the grain might fall into. A plastic baseball bat or a section of a rubber hose can also be used as a flail.

Shock
—a teepee-shaped arrangement of individual sheaves brought together and leaned against each other toward the center, with the grain heads pointed up. Bundles of bound grain should be shocked as soon as possible after harvesting to promote further drying.

Straw
—the dry stalk of the tall grass that is left after threshing the grain. Wheat straw is useful as bedding material for animals, mulch for the garden, or tilled in as a green manure.

Thresh
—the process of separating the grain from the straw and the chaff. Whack the sheaves over the back of a chair, open barrel, or sawhorse, or put the grain in a sack and trample underfoot. Traditional threshing involves beating the seed heads with a flail.

Winnow
—the process of separating the grain from the remnants of straw and the chaff. The easiest way to winnow is to pour the grain from a high place in a light breeze to a container below. The breeze will carry the lighter straw and chaff away. Or use a fan, which will provide any desired speed of wind at your convenience.

CORN

Corn (
Zea mays
), an annual grass with an extraordinarily high natural mutation rate, is unique among all wild grasses. Native to the Americas, it was the Native Americans who originally developed many varieties of corn through careful seed selection. The resulting flour, hominy, flint, and dent grains were the very foundation of their diet and agriculture. The Native American word for corn was
maize
, which meant “that which sustains.”

Today these ancient crops, commonly referred to as
field corns
because they are left in the field to dry and stored on the cob, provide flour and ground meals as well as the most common feedstock for animals. Some colorful old-time (American) Indian flints are sold for decorative purposes and appear dried for flower arrangements or heaped in a basket as a Thanksgiving centerpiece.

Because corn seed is only viable for a few years, you must keep planting a variety to prevent its extinction. It is remarkable that despite the vicissitudes of American history over the last several hundred years—war, western settlement, increasing industrialization and urbanization, not to mention the decline of the family farm—resourceful men and women have faithfully planted these antique breeds to keep them alive and viable.

POPCORN

Popcorn (
Zea mays
var.
praecox
or
everta
) is considered by archaeologists to be the most ancient of all corns. Slow to ripen, all popcorns mature in 95 to 120 days. In general, nonhybrid popcorn plants grow 3 to 5 feet tall and have smaller ears with small, pointed kernels; some hybrid popcorns have larger kernels. They are more drought tolerant, do not require as fertile a soil, and can handle more crowding than other varieties of corn.

Popcorn kernels have a tough outer covering (endosperm). The kernels pop when their moisture content is heated and water vapor pressure builds inside the endosperm until the whole thing explodes! There are white, black, yellow, strawberry, blue, and multicolored popcorn varieties—all turn white when popped, revealing their snowy interiors.

Sweet corn

Sweet corn (
Zea mays
var.
rugosa
) is a tasty mutation in which the kernels contain unstable sugars in a water solution as well as starch. First appearing in the 1880s, sweet corn was developed by European immigrants to the New World. Hybrid corn varieties were developed in the 1930s and became famous for their generous yield, early productivity, and ability to ripen a crop all at the same time. Although sweet corn is a good choice for commercial production, gardeners looking for an extended harvest season will need to plant several small crops of hybrid corn in succession or isolate individual plantings of early, mid-, and late-season varieties (see page 107). Home gardeners with limited growing space may want to plant an open-pollinated variety, as these tend to ripen over a period of time, giving the gardener a longer sweet corn season from a single sowing.

PLANTING:
Corn requires a fertile soil and likes heat, needing at least 6 hours of full sunlight a day to thrive. Begin planting early varieties a week before your frost-free date, mid- and late-season ones 1 to 2 weeks after that date—or later. Corn will germinate better in a sandy soil that warms up quickly in the spring. Delay planting in heavy clay soils until they have warmed up to 60 to 70°F at a planting depth of 3 inches or risk losing the seed to rot. A soil thermometer will help you gauge the proper planting time. A classic heavy feeder, corn benefits from ample quantities of manure and any nitrogen-rich organic material; keep weeds down to eliminate competition for nourishment and water.

Unlike most grain, which can be sown by broadcasting, corn is planted in rows, blocks, or hills in a designated pattern and must be spaced to accommodate weeding as well as to maximize pollination; site along the north end of the garden to avoid shading other crops. Sow seed in rows 1 inch deep every 3 to 4 inches for early and midseason plantings; later plantings should be 1½ to 2 inches deep every 4 to 10 inches. For wide row plantings, space plants 10 inches apart in each direction in a bed 3 by 6 feet or 3 by 10 feet. Native Americans traditionally planted in hills or a water-collecting depression to make the best use of available water. Sow 5 or 6 seeds about 1½ inches deep in concentrations 2½ to 3 feet apart in every direction, thinning to 3 to 5 stalks per hill. Corn needs moisture to germinate and periodic irrigation or rainfall while it is actively growing, watering deeply to 4 inches.