Vegetable Gardening (71 page)

Here are a few specific problems that plague greens:

Bottom rot:
This condition, caused by a fungus, makes lettuce (especially head lettuce) wilt and rot before maturing. It's mostly seen in poorly drained soil during wet conditions. To avoid this problem, rotate crops, keep your soil well drained, and grow lettuce in raised beds.

Spinach leaf miner:
This small fly lays eggs on spinach and Swiss chard leaves. The eggs hatch, and the tiny larvae tunnel in between the leaf layers. Pick off and destroy tunneled leaves, and cover the crop with a floating row cover after germination to prevent damage.

Tip burn:
Tip burn causes the leaves of head lettuce to turn brown at the edges. This condition is seen during hot weather when soil moisture tends to fluctuate, creating a calcium deficiency in plants. Don't bother adding calcium to the soil, but do pick off burned leaves, choose varieties that resist tip burn, and keep the soil evenly moist to control this problem.

Your bowl runneth over: Harvesting greens

Harvesting greens couldn't be easier. After all, you eat the leaves. Except for crisphead lettuces, harvest greens while they're young and tender to avoid a common complaint of lettuce growers: bitter-tasting lettuce. Bitter taste usually develops in older plants, so start picking when the leaves are 4 inches long. Harvest the outer leaves first to allow the inner leaves to continue to develop. Also, wait until you're almost ready to prepare your meal to harvest. That way, the greens will be fresh and crisp in your salad bowl.

Some lettuces, such as loose-leaf varieties and Swiss chard, are examples of "cut and come again" greens (see Figure 10-2). You can cut these greens at the ground level — they'll sprout new leaves from their bases — or you can just harvest the mature leaves, leaving the immature leaves to continue growing. Cutting the leaves at ground level is a great alternative to replanting, and you can cut the plants up to four times.

Crisphead or iceberg lettuce can be harvested young, before heads form. However, to get the solid, blanched heads seen in grocery stores, wait until full maturity when heads are firm when squeezed.

Chapter 11: Sweet Corn and an A to T of Other Worthy Veggies

In This Chapter

Planting, growing, and harvesting corn and its relatives

Adding variety to your plot and your plate by planting some unusual vegetables

The preceding seven chapters cover the most popular and widely grown vegetables. But part of the fun of vegetable gardening is trying new and unusual crops. These "experiments" can be as commonplace as corn or as exotic as mizuna.

This chapter starts with one of the most popular vegetables of summer: corn. Corn isn't related to any of the vegetables mentioned in Chapters 4 through 10, so I give it a special place in this chapter. Although corn is as traditional as apple pie, any vegetable that's closely related to lawn grass has some unique qualities!

In this chapter, I also include an alphabetical listing of other fun and unusual vegetables to help you decide which ones to try and how to grow them. Each listing provides a description of the vegetable, a list of sample varieties to look for, and some basic growing tips. (
Note:
The planting times for each of these vegetables depend on the weather in your area. Refer to seed packages for planting times. See the appendix for information about hardiness zones and first and last frost dates.)

As a bonus, I include cooking tips with many of the vegetables. Like my mom used to say, "You'll never know if you like it unless you try it." Happy gardening, and bon appétit!

Sweet Corn and Its Relatives

Corn (
Zea mays
) has a reputation of being grown only in large fields, but you also can grow a great crop of corn in a small garden in your backyard. The satisfaction of harvesting your own fresh-picked corn and steaming it for dinner is one of the joys of summer. In the following sections, I discuss sweet corn along with popcorn.

Sweet corn

If all you've ever eaten is sweet corn from the supermarket, you're missing one of summer's true delights. Fresh-picked, steamed sweet corn has a sweet flavor that brings a smile to old and young faces alike. You also can roast corn on an open fire or grill to give it a woodsy flavor.

By selecting the right varieties to grow, you can have sweet corn maturing all summer long. And you don't need a 10-acre field to grow it. Five to six short rows are all you need to get plenty of ears for your family.

Varieties

The kernels of the sweet corn plant are actually seeds. Most sweet corn varieties come with white, yellow, or bicolor (yellow and white mixed) kernels. Some heirloom varieties that are mostly used for corn flour and roasting feature red and blue kernels, which is where the red- and blue-colored corn tortilla chips come from. The color of corn that you choose depends on what flavor you like and what varieties grow well where you live. Varieties mature in 65 to 100 days, so choose a sampling that will mature over time in your garden. Gardeners in cold climates should stick with quick-maturing varieties, such as ‘Quickie' and ‘Early Sunglow'.

As with many vegetables, corn has open-pollinated heirloom varieties as well as many modern hybrids (see Chapter 3 for more about open pollination and hybrids). The following two newer hybrid groups, which hold their sweetness and tenderness, are now commonly found in grocery stores, and their seeds are available in garden centers and seed catalogs:

Sugar-enhanced (se) varieties
have a special gene in their makeup that increases the tenderness and sweetness of the ears.

Supersweet (sh2) varieties
have a gene bred into the variety that makes the ears even sweeter than sugar-enhanced, and they can be stored for a week in the refrigerator without losing their sweetness. However, many feel that what supersweets gain in sweetness, they lose in "real corn" flavor.

Even though these newer, sweeter varieties are a bit more finicky about growing, especially the sh2 varieties, they do allow you to eat your corn over time without worrying about it getting starchy. Still, for best flavor, eat your sweet corn as soon as possible after harvest.

Following are some sweet corn varieties you may want to try:

Some standard heirloom yellow varieties to grow are ‘Golden Bantam' and ‘Ashworth'. White-kerneled standard heirloom varieties include ‘Country Gentleman' and ‘Stowell's Evergreen'. One uniquely colored heirloom variety is ‘Black Aztec' (black).

A few standard sugary hybrids include ‘Early Sunglow' (yellow), ‘Honey and Cream' (bicolor), and ‘Silver Queen' (white).

If you're interested in sugar-enhanced varieties, try ‘Quickie' (bicolor), ‘Sugar Buns' (yellow), ‘Sugar Pearl' (white), and ‘Ruby Queen' (red).

For some good supersweet varieties, grow ‘Early Xtra Sweet' (yellow), ‘Honey N' Pearl' (bicolor), and ‘Xtra Tender' (white).