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Growing Kohlrabi

Last spring I'd started a few seeds in the house, and planted them in our patch of broccoli, where the leaves blended right in. In mid-June I was showing my vegetable garden to a class when I noticed them for the first time. The bulbs were already were already 2-3 inches across, and beautiful. I yelped with excitement, and picked one immediately.

My books tell me that one need not start kohlrabi in the house. That makes sense, since they grow very quickly. They don't need anything special: full sun is recommended, but will grow with some shade. They are not heavy feeders, but do best with soil that is evenly moist, not dry.

I discovered that the taste of kohlrabi is mild and pleasant. Cut in chunks, it adds crunch to a salad. I like the purple kohlrabi best - it tastes like the green ones, but is more colorful. The interior is white in either case. I also added kohlrabi to beef stew, where it acts much like carrots.

Another lesser-known vegetable is the parsnip. Considered an old-fashioned vegetable, it deserves a better reputation. Planted now, this cousin of the carrot will grow nicely all summer, sleep under the snows of winter, and be ready to eat early next spring when few fresh veggies are available. You can eat them anytime, of course, but the cold of winter helps them to convert some of their starch into sugar, much like potatoes stored at less then 50 degrees.

Parsnips are slow to germinate: they can take 2 weeks or more. Plant them half an inch deep (and like any seed, press down on the soil after covering them to give good contact with the soil). Space them 4 inches apart, and leave just 4 inches between rows. They will get to be 6-10 inches long, tapering from half an inch at the bottom to 2 inches or so at the top.

You can cook parsnips by boiling or steaming them, and serving with butter. That way you will best appreciate their fine flavor. Or you can gussy them up: bake with maple syrup or brown sugar and a little cinnamon. I tend to use mine in stews, though I have to admit that I don't find garden space for them every year - but when I don't, I miss them early in the spring. Like kohlrabi, they are not found in every grocery store produce section.

Karen's daughter and family live in Scotland. The Scots serve a lot of "swedes" - what we call rutabagas - and I have developed a mild appreciation for them. I've always loved the word rutabaga, but, I admit, I've never grown them - before this year, that is. I read the entry in Ed Smith's "The Vegetable Gardener's Bible" (a great reference book on veggies) and then called Ed, who is a friend of mine up in Cabot, VT.

Ed told me that they are easy enough to grow, but he only grew them once - he didn't find their flavor interesting. The Scots mainly put them in stews, where they take on the flavor of the stew, or mash them like potatoes. A Web search (http://www.nutritiondata.com) indicated that rutabagas are a good source of dietary fiber, vitamin C, potassium and manganese. One cup of boiled rutabagas has 66 calories and provides more than half the adult daily requirement of vitamin C and 3 grams of dietary fiber.

Ed Smith advised covering rutabagas with row cover of some sort - Agribon and Reemay are brand names - to keep root maggots from infecting them. It is common, he said to pick a rutabaga and find it full of holes and little white worms if they have been grown without a physical barrier to prevent moths from laying their eggs.

Row cover, in case you've never tried it, is the organic gardener's friend. It is a very thin spun-bonded polypropylene fabric that is used to cover crops to keep off insect pests, or to add a little warmth at night and to reduce sun burn potential now, early in the season. I like to cover newly planted lettuces that have been started in the house to help them to adjust to life outdoors, even if they are hardened off. And every year row covers save my cukes from being chomped by striped cucumber beetles. Row covers must be removed in time for insect pollination, of course, for plants like cukes and squashes.

So try something new. If these particular crops don't thrill you, perhaps you can try artichokes or cardoon or broccoli raab. And hey, for some people Swiss chard is foreign and exotic! Expand your horizons, and I predict you'll enjoy doing so.

Henry Homeyer is a gardening coach. His web site is www.Gardening-Guy.com. You may reach him at P.O. Box 364, Cornish Flat, NH or at gardening.guy@valley.net.