Wizard Recipes

Lettuce growing goes back at least to the Greeks and Persians in 500 B.C. Columbus first brought lettuce seed to the Americas. There are many different kinds of lettuce, all Lactuca sativa. But they can be sorted into 5 basic types: butterhead, celtuce, crisphead, looseleaf, and romaine.

Butterhead. These are between head lettuce and pure leaf lettuce. They make a head but not a tight, blanched sort like crisphead lettuce. They are loose, leafy, and headshaped. That gives them some of the best of both worlds. I don’t even try to grow a crisphead lettuce in my garden, but every year I do grow some butterhead-type lettuce as well as leaf lettuce.

Those are my 2 favorites in salads and, in my experience, the easiest to grow. Boston and Bibb lettuce are butterhead types, as is any lettuce described in a seed catalog as making a “loose head.” The butterhead lettuces are green-leafed and healthy, have a wonderful garden-fresh flavor, and are ready to harvest only a little later than leaf lettuce.

But butterheads, like crispheads, can’t stand hot weather. You will have more wonderful lettuce than you can eat for a brief period. Then, when the weather turns hot, that’s the end of it.

Crisphead.The most familiar crisphead is iceberg lettuce, the kind with the big, firm head that you buy in stores and eat in restaurants. Years ago it dominated the commercial lettuce market to the exclusion of all other salad greens, despite the fact that it has less color and taste and fewer vitamins and minerals than any other kind of lettuce. (It does store and transport well, though.)

But crisphead lettuce is the hardest to grow in your home garden and is really the least desirable. And it takes twice as long to mature as leaf lettuce. The inside leaves of a head lettuce are blanched because the sun couldn’t get at them. That’s the reason for the milder taste and lower nutritional value.

Hot weather, especially hot nights, is the worst thing for head lettuce; instead of making a head, it tends to go to seed and acquire a bitter taste in the process. Fulton, Great Lakes, and Imperial are varieties of crisphead lettuce. Space them 8 to 18 inches apart, wider for bigger heads

Looseleaf.Looseleaf lettuces are the easiest to grow, the hardiest in hot weather, and the most nourishing. Slobolt is

a famous hot-weather variety; Oak Leaf and Salad Bowl are 2 others. Once you’re used to leaf lettuce, iceberg lettuce is

almost too bland to bear. Leaf lettuce has at first experience a stronger taste, but you can soon get used to it and learn to love it.

Leaf lettuce is ready long before the others, in 40 to 45 days, whereas head lettuce takes 80 to 95 days and needs all of it cool. There are many different varieties of looseleaf lettuce, including Simpson, Grand Rapids, and Salad Bowl.

Romaine. Also called “cos,” this lettuce comes in several varieties such as Paris White, Valmaine, and Parris Island. Romaine leaves grow out of a tight central bunch and straight up instead of curling into a ball or waving loosely.

Romaine tolerates more heat than head or butterhead lettuce but not as much as leaf lettuce. It’s not as easy to grow as leaf lettuce, and it takes much longer. Germination is more spotty, so plant it thicker. Leaf lettuce matures in 40 to 45 days, while romaine needs 70 to 85 days; if you start romaine indoors and then transplant it, though, you’ll enjoy its nutritious and flavorful leaves.

It’s often planted in late summer or fall in warm-climate places to avoid the heat. Plant 1/ 2 inch deep, 1/ 2 inch apart if you’re going to transplant. Thin or transplant to 8 inches apart. Romaine varieties do best in the Pacific coast climate, but there’s a limit to how much rain even romaine can appreciate, so consider a tunnel cloche.

When to Plant In spring, plant hardy lettuce varieties at the same time as peas-as soon as you can get seed into the ground in the spring. They can endure some early freezes. If not, since seed’s cheap, plant again. But leaf lettuce or any of the other non crisp head lettuces are very perishable once harvested from the garden, and they don’t last in the garden very long-an average of only 3 weeks.

The answer to that is succession planting about every 2 or 3 weeks. With succession planting plus a cold frame, you can have lettuce every month of the year if you live in the South, and fresh lettuce for about 8 months of the year in a climate like the Midwest.

Winter Lettuce. To grow winter lettuce where it freezes, plant it in the garden in late summer (or in your cold frame in early fall), and then transplant to the cold frame right before first frost. There it will keep producing for some time.

You can plant a fall crop in late July, another in early August, another in late August, and maybe even another in September. To save your latest crop during a frost, dig up plants, transplant them to pots or flats, and install in a sunny window inside your house, where they’ll produce some more.

Avoiding Bolting. Lettuce is one of the seed makers that is triggered to mature by the long daylight periods of early summer. That means if you live in a warm part of the country where they grow lettuce all winter, and you plant your seed in October, your lettuce won’t make seed until the following summer.

The seed may lie dormant all winter, but it then comes up first thing in the spring. But if you plant it in late spring in the North, it soon makes seed. So for a longer harvest season and a delay of the seed making (”bolting”), plant as early in the spring as you can, indoors or out. In the very far south, you can grow lettuce in the winter months.

How to Plant. Lettuce likes deeply worked, crumbly soil that you have manured or composted the fall before, because it has a puny root system that doesn’t hunt for food effectively. The Cook’s Garden offers many lettuce varieties, but every catalog has some.

You can plant lettuce in the garden or start it indoors and transplant when in the 4-leaf stage. But I’m just too lazy to start it indoors and transplant when, with just a little more time, it will grow outdoors. Plant1/4 to 1/ 2 inch deep. For containers, put 1 plant in a 8- inch pot, 4 in a 12-inch pot. Their shallow roots can manage in a pot or flat only 6-8 inches deep. But plant several seeds and then thin.

Sun. For very hot weather choose loose leaf lettuce. But any lettuce seed is harder to sprout in hot weather. It helps to cover the newly planted seed with burlap or wet sawdust and keep it wet until after sprouting. Later you can shelter the lettuce from the sun by stretching burlap on upright sticks over the row like a light roof. In fact, professional

growers grow lettuce under cheesecloth or fish netting laid over slats to cut back the sun’s heat as much as 45 percent.

They use a photographic light meter as a guide to getting the right amount.

Water. Lettuce needs water when the leaves begin to droop. If it doesn’t rain, you’ll have to irrigate. Base-type watering is a better irrigation for your lettuce than water sprinkled on because it’s less inviting to bugs than moisture between the leaves. But sprinkling works if that’s what you’ve got.

Air. Any lettuce will stand up better under heat if it is well thinned and air can get in there and circulate. When any kind of lettuce is crowded, the leaves may start to rot in heat. Then bugs move in by the millions. (Uncrowded lettuce has bugs too, but only some walking around that you can easily rinse off.) Speaking of pests, if slugs are a problem, install toads and leopard frogs. They like to rest under small piles of old hay or mulch during the day and hunt (slugs!) at night.

Thinning. Lettuce thinnings are good to eat-just cut off the root-so it helps your salad supply to thin in stages, as the plants need more room and as you need more lettuce! When thinning, be sure and pull the plant up root and all, because if you leave the root in there, it will try to grow again and pull nourishment from the other plants.

Harvesting. The nicest time to harvest in hot summer is early in the morning, before either you or the plants get hot. Then you wash your lettuce and put it in the refrigerator until you use it. If you cut lettuce leaves away fairly early in a plant’s lifespan and it doesn’t need thinning, keep watering; it’ll keep growing more leaves for a while.

That’s especially true of leaf lettuces. Some of the special hot weather varieties will let you keep harvesting for a surprising length of time. To use your lettuce like that, pick off outside leaves or cut so you leave about the bottom third of the plant. Then it will take off and grow again, for a while anyway.

Drying. There’s no point in freezing or canning lettuce. Some people dry it, though. To do that, use tender inner leaves. Shred the leaves. Blanch until wilted. It takes about 1 1/2 minutes in boiling water. Drain.

Spread thinly over deny drator trays or sun-drying trays. Dry at 120T in a dehydrator or oven. Stir and rotate trays once in a while. When dry enough, a cool shred will crumble when rubbed between your fingers. Takes about 8-12 hours in a dehydrator, 2 or 3 days in the sun. Use dried lettuce in soups and in other recipes.

The sweet peppers (Capsicum frutescens grossum) are basically bigger than the hots and come in many types: blocky bell peppers; heart-shaped pimentos; tomato-shaped “cherry” varieties; long banana-shaped peppers that are only 2 inches wide at the top but 6 to 8 inches long and produce heavily (30 or more fruits per plant); the long, curved, green Italian bull’s horn pepper; Japanese sweet peppers; Lamuyo, the European sweet pepper; and yellowgreen, thick-walled, 4- to 5-inch-long cubanelles that set fruit continuously once mature.

You can grow the pimento (also spelled “pimiento”), an exceptionally sweet pepper when red-ripe, for salads or to make red strips for stuffing olive centers. In my opinion, bell peppers are for folks who’ve never tried the others.

Sweets do well where there’s a long, warm growing season; they’re also a possibility if you have a hot summer and give them an early start indoors. Redwood City, Territorial, Shumway and Nichols all have good sweet-pepper offerings.

PLANTING

Sweets like a light soil. (I have the heaviest clay imaginable. Our valley used to have a brick factory, and all the really old buildings on Main Street are made of Kendrick mud.) Too much nitrogen in the soil makes tall, dark green plants that don’t grow any peppers.

Small plants will set more peppers. In temperate zones, start peppers from seed indoors, about 50 to 70 days before your frost-free date. Plant between February and April, 1/ 8 to 1 / 4 inch deep and 1 inch apart, more or less. During germination, keep them at 75 to 95°F; a soil temperature of 85°F is ideal. Keep moist until they’ve sprouted.

Water with warm water to avoid a possibly fatal cold shock. After germination they can handle 70°F day temps and night temps as low as 60°F, but they’ll grow faster if warmer. Below 55°F, they stop growing. When peppers are about 2 inches tall, transplant to 2 inches apart. They need plenty of dirt for their roots!

If you buy plants, be careful: Sweets and hots look exactly the same when young. To grow in a container, put 1 pepper plant in each 12-inch pot; to grow in a larger box, space 18 inches apart, soil at least 1 foot deep, 3 gal. soil per plant.

Wait to transplant peppers to the garden outside until they are at least 5-6 inches tall, 6 to 8 weeks old, and and last frost date is at least a week past (2 weeks is better). (They grow best when days are 70 to 75°F) Plant 1-2 feet apart, rows 2 or 3 feet apart. Don’t mulch cold ground.

SAVING SEED

Sweet peppers are self-fertile and bee-pollinated. They will cross with nearby plants, so don’t grow another variety within 20 feet. Remove inferior plants before flowering happens so that any marrying that occurs is between your best. Thoroughly ripen before picking-until they actually begin to shrivel.

If frost is a risk, gather just before frost and finish ripening inside. Then cut in half and remove seeds. Not much pulp will come along, so you can just dry and store them. You’ll get hundreds of seeds per fruit. They live about 4 years.

HARVESTING AND PRESERVING

Night temps below 60°F and day temps above 90°F can cause blossoms to die and drop off. But with good weather, you’ll harvest maybe 10 weeks after transplanting to the garden. Each bell plant ripens only 1 fruit at a time. You’ll get 8 to 10 fruits per bell under ideal growing conditions, with steady picking and no frost.

Be sure to harvest before frost. You can use the small peppers too (they’re great stuffed). To pick, cut the stem an inch above the fruit. “Green” peppers start out green-colored and are generally picked green if they’re to be shipped to market. But you can wait until they are ripe and truly sweet (the darker the color, the sweeter the flavor).

They change in color to red (or yellow, dark purple, white, or brown for unusual varieties). When a frost is imminent, pull up the whole plant, hang it upside down somewhere, and the fruit will continue to ripen! Sweets will keep a while more off the plant and in the house, if it’s cool and the air is not too dry.

Freezing Sweets. Cut in half; remove seeds and pulp. Freeze your nicest ones in halves for later stuffing. Dice or slice the others. No need to blanch. Package in small plastic bags, since you may want only a little at a time. To freeze pimentos, roast and skin as described under “Canning Pimentos,” and then freeze.

Frozen pepper strips of various colors make visually appealing dishes. Never thaw pepper before using. Use in strips in winter salads when only partly thawed and still crisp. Or add to soups, casseroles, and macaroni or chicken dishes.

Drying Sweets. Cut in 1/ 2 -inch strips or rings. Remove seeds. Spread on drying frames or thread on a string. Spread rings no more than 2 layers deep, strips no more than 1/ 2 inch deep. Dry until crisp and brittle.

Canning Sweets. Cut out stem ends and remove seeds and cores as above. You can leave them whole or cut into any number or shape of pieces you fancy. Preboil 5 minutes. Then pack hot with hot liquid.

Canning Pimentos. First roast in a 450°F oven 5 minutes or until the skins blister. Then drop them into cold water. Then peel. Cut out stem ends; remove seeds and cores. Pack them flat in pint jars. Sprinkle in about 1/ 2 salt. Puon your jar lid. Pimentos make their own liquid-don’t add any.

Sweet Red Pepper “Pimentos.” Halve sweet red peppers. Take out seeds and pith. Cut into strips; steep in boiling water 5 minutes. Drain. Put into canning jars. Pour over a boiling-hot mix of 1 c. cider vinegar, 1 c. water, 1/2 c. sugar, 11. salt, and 2 t. olive oil. Cover and let soak like that 2 weeks in the fridge. Then either repackage into small bags and freeze, or use procedure and times for canning chilies.

Recipe Ideas

Whether using raw or cooked sweet peppers, always get rid of the seeds and white pulp inside. There’s really no need to skin a pepper except with pimentos, but if you want to, see “Canning Pimentos.” Serve them raw, chopped in a green salad, or as strips with or without dip.

Or add to casseroles, lay strips on pizza, skewer as part of a shish kebab, add to omelets, fry with just garlic, or stirfry with other veggies and maybe meat too. Or saute with garlic and onion, adding tofu chunks at last moment. Or stuff with cheese and rice (see the recipe). Or precook with onions and green beans, and serve mixed with melted cheese. Or chop small and add to any stew or soup. Or dip in batter and fry.

Cucumis sativus, the cucumber genus (of which citron is a member), is easy to grow if you have a warm summer and can avoid insect and disease problems. Before World War II, especially in the South, people had simply given up trying to grow cucumbers because they suffered so from diseases.

Then seed companies came out with disease-resistant hybrids that solved most problems-except the cucumber beetle. As with tomatoes, there are a jillion varieties: the familiar green salad cuke, various thin-skinned pickling kinds, little yellow-colored “lemon” cucumbers, long crooked ones from Asia, the Japanese “kyuri” (which they use unpeeled), citron, and so on.

CITRON: Citron looks like a small, round watermelon but is solid clean through, with uniformly green flesh and green seed. (Don’t confuse it with the citrus fruit that resembles a large lemon and is also called citron.) Citron is eaten only pickled, preserved in sugar syrup, or candied. You can substitute citron-melon preserves for store-bought citron in fruit cakes, plum puddings, and mincemeat.

LEMON CUCUMBERS: This round, tennis-ball-sized fruit may have a few spines on the skin; just rub them off. Otherwise it’s just another cuke.

Planting and Growing

WHEN TO PLANT: Cucumbers are less hardy than winter squashes but are more hardy than melons. Wait to plant or transplant into the garden until the weather is truly warm, after the corn, at the same time that you would plant watermelon-about a week after your last frost date. (A frost would be the end for them.)

In a very hot climate like that of the Mississippi Gulf Coast, an early spring planting (February or March) and a late summer one do best. Cucumbers like a warm summer and lots of sunshine.

HOW TO PLANT: Cucumbers need well-manured, welltilled ground and plenty of water all through their growing season. We plant from seed directly in the garden around June 1, which is when we can start to trust the weather to be and stay warm here.

Cucumbers are only 55 to 65 days to maturity, so a late start still gives you time for a good crop if you have a reasonably long growing season. It’s possible to transplant cucumbers, but it’s a little risky because they don’t do well if their root system is disturbed.

So if you start them inside, do so using a system that lets you set them out in the garden in the same block of dirt in which they grew inside-little peat pots, for instance. Or plant in the garden under paper or plastic, which gives you a little extra safety as the weather is warming up.

Most people plant them in hills, 4 to 5 feet apart each way, 1 inch deep. Allow 7 to 10 days for germination, about 75 days to maturity. If you want to plant cucumbers in rows instead of hills, make the rows about 7 feet apart, and thin the plants to 12 to 18 inches apart in the row

CONTAINER AND TRELLIS GROWING: Cucumbers do exceptionally well in containers, and they produce for city dwellers even in rooftop gardens. You can fit 3 bush cucumber plants into a container the size of half a whiskey

barrel. Provide at least 3 gal. soil per plant, at least 1 foot deep, plants at least 6 inches apart. In the garden, you can

crowd them more if you give the vines something to climb up. Lane Morgan says she usually uses trellises with hers “to save space and make life harder for the slugs.”

THINNING AND WEEDING: In hills, thin to about 4 plants per hill if you have well-composted or manured soil,

less if you don’t. But don’t thin until the plants are at least 3 weeks old, because they have a high fatality rate and you may end up with too few. Weeding in your cucumber patch can be done thoroughly and with a rototiller while the little plants are at home on cucumber hill. But when they start “running,” as it’s called, with long, leafy stems covering the ground every which way that’s the end of the cultivating. You can still weed by hand, though.

WATERING: Cucumbers need plenty to drink, especially after they start making cucumbers. A cucumber is 95 percent water, which has to come from somewhere. Figure on a deep watering at least once a week. You don’t have to water every piece of ground the running vine is covering.

If you’re short of water, concentrate it near the hill where the primary roots are. Once the cucumber vines start bearing fruit, as long as you keep watering, they will keep bearing cucumbers until the frost kills them. A few vines can produce a lot of cucumbers before the summer is over.

But if you let your vines dry out badly, the cucumbers will taste so bitter that you won’t be able to eat them, and even the very little ones that have experienced such a drought will grow up with that bitter taste. So if they do dry out badly, it’s a good idea to pick off all the cucumbers, water the plant well, and let it start from scratch again.

BEETLES AND DISEASES: Cucumber beetles do their damage while the plant is young, before it starts to run. They attack the lower part of the stem and the underside of the leaves. Commercial farmers generally have more trouble with them than do home gardeners. It doesn’t take a whole lot of cucumber plants to give your family a good supply.

If you live in cucumber-beetle country, you can protect the little plants by covering them with frames over which you have stretched fly screen or mosquito netting-wooden box-type frames set into the dirt, for instance, or wire frames with the edges of the netting held down by covering with dirt.

When the plants have grown big enough to hold their own, you can store away the whole rigging for use next year. It helps control diseases if you destroy the old vines and cucumbers by burning at the end of each year and don’t plant cucumbers in the same place in your garden 2 years in a row.

If you’ve never grown cucumbers before, the best way to find out what problems you will face is to simply plant some and see what happens.

Harvesting

Keep picking to keep your vines producing. Pick cukes while they’re green and small for the best taste. Pick according to the size of cucumber that your recipe calls for. In general, 3-9 inches long is about right. You can actually pickle or eat any size, but cucumbers that are getting yellow and seedy are not nearly as tasty.

All you have to do once the cucumbers are big enough to suit you is gently pluck them off the vine and carry them into the house. Store extras in the refrigerator while you’re figuring out what to do with them.

Very young, tender cucumbers can be used peel and all. “Midgets” are those up to 3 inches. They go into your midget crock-a glass gallon jar will do. “Dills” are those 3 to 6 inches long. Cucumbers over 6 inches long are “slicers” to be used fresh or to make cucumber sandwiches (slice peeled cucumbers and mayonnaise on homemade bread) or instant pickles (put thinly sliced, peeled cucumbers in a salt-vinegar-water brine).

Great big cukes don’t make good pickles anyway because they get too hollow in the middle. If you’ve seen only store-bought cucumbers you may not know about yellow ones, but the life cycle of a cucumber goes like this: blossom, tiny green cucumber, big green cuke, real big green cuke, yellow cuke, brown cuke.

Yellow/ brown is the proper stage for saving seed or feeding to cows, pigs, or chickens. But some people cook the yellow ones or make pickles out of them.

STORING AND PRESERVING: Store green cukes in a basket in a cool, damp place such as your root cellar. Storing at 45-55T, 80-90 percent humidity, will keep them fresh as long as is possible for cukes-which isn’t all that long.Then you’ll need to shift to another method.

Freezing. I’ve been told that if you wrap individual servings of sliced cucumbers in foil and freeze them, they make a delicious dish that winter served unwrapped, thawed, in individual dishes. Mix heavy cream with a little dollop of lemon juice and pour it over them.

Drying. I used to think pickling was the only way to preserve cucumbers. As on many other points, my readers have educated me. Jeanne Weston , sent me a lot of advice about home-drying foods, and she says you can dry cucumbers. She has done it and says they make good salad flavorings. She thinly slices them, dries them until brittle, and stores them until needed. Then she breaks up the dried cucumber into small pieces and scatters them over her winter salad.

Recipe Ideas

RAW CUKES: Cucumbers are good raw in salads and sandwiches. Or peel and cut into sticks or chips and serve plain or with dip. Or make a gourmet salad: sharp cheese, Greek olives, tomatoes, and cukes, all chunked and tossed with raw greens and salad dressing. Or serve cuke slices with chopped onion, tomato, raw greens, and blue cheese dressing.

Boats. If allowed to grow, cucumbers will get very large- as long as 10 inches or so. Such a fat cucumber makes a fine child’s boat for the bathtub. Cut in half lengthwise, scoop out the seeds, and there’s your boat. You can feed the other oversized, yellowed, or imperfect cucumbers to the chickens and pigs.

When feeding them to chickens, first break cukes open. If the chickens aren’t hungry enough to stoop to cucumbers, the cukes will still make fine compost.

Sandwiches. In summer we eat lots of cucumber sandwiches, a quick lunch at a time of year when cucumbers are abundant and time is not. Peel and slice fresh cucumbers. Spread homemade bread with mayo, layer on sliced cucumbers- maybe add slices of fresh garden tomato-and top with another slice of bread

COOKED CUKES: Cukes can also be eaten cooked, as you might a summer squash, in soups and vegetable dishes. See summer squash recipes for more possibilities; you can often substitute cukes for zukes.

When somebody tells you zucchini is Italian soul food, that’s okay. But if they say zucchini came over on the boat with Columbus, inform them they’ve got the direction backwards. Both summer and winter squash are natives of the United States that migrated to Europe!

A meal of squash, beans, corn, and venison was a basic native American supper. Summer squashes are grown, cooked, and preserved quite differently than are winter squashes . Zucchini, marrow, scalloped pattypan squash (or “white bush scallop” or “cymling”), cocozelle, yellow crookneck, and yellow

CLIMATE AND SOIL

I’ve never heard of a place you couldn’t grow summer squash. The longer the growing season, the longer they bear. In 40 to 55 days your first young summer squash is ready to eat. There’s no point in starting them indoors and transplanting because they can’t take having their roots disturbed.

Summer squashes need to be planted in warm soil, well past frost, and they need warm weather to grow in. They like well-manured, well-composted soil and wood ashes. Keep down the weeds.

PLANTING

HOW many plants? Summer squashes are prolific- especially zucchini! Even when small children plant and care for it, it grows. It blooms abundantly without fail and produces abundantly. Two plants are probably enough for a small family, 4 plants provide plenty for you plus some to give away to friends, and 8 plants give a large family a whole winter’s supply.

If you plant a whole package of zucchini seed, it will grow and grow and grow. There will be no way to eat, use, or give away all that summer squash- unless you have animals, that is. We grow it for pig feed. Plant summer squash 1 inch deep, 4 feet between hills and 4 feet between rows. For a container garden, plant 1 per 8- inch pot, 1 foot deep, 5 gallons of soil per plant, 2 feet between plants if they’re in something like a window box.

HARVESTING

Pick your zucchini when they’re small. You’ll get the tastiest, tenderest ones if you harvest them very young, when they’re less than 4 to 6 inches in diameter (if they’re the kinds that grow long). Harvest when the skin is so tender that you can easily press your fingernail through it.

You’ll also be spared wondering how to use the extra pounds of veggies that will grow if you leave them on the vine a few days longer. As long as you keep picking, your plants keep producing. If you leave squashes unpicked, they get bigger, their skin gets tougher, and their seeds get bigger and tougher. But the squashes are still edible.

If you’re fully supplied and your summer squash plants are still producing-which they will do as long as you keep picking and frost hasn’t arrived-you can quit watering them. Or let them grow the last squashes undisturbed for a seed crop. Or attack the plants with an ax while screaming!

PRESERVING

Cellar-store, freeze, can, or dry your summer squashes.

Cellar-Storing. Let the squashes grow as big as they will; pick and store in a cool place. They’ll keep a couple of months or so.

Freezing. Wash; peel if you like. Slice about 1/ 2 inch thick. Blanch about 3 minutes, chill, and package. This works fine with great huge summer squashes as well as with little ones. I don’t freeze more than a few bucketfuls though, because my family just doesn’t have that much desire for frozen zucchini.

Drying. Wash; peel if you like. Slice 1/2 s inch thick. Recommended: Steam 6 minutes. Spread in thin layer. Turn as necessary while drying so they won’t mildew. Dry until brittle. Dried summer squash is good with dips (eat like potato chips-it’s better for you!). Try them with a yogurt-based dip or in soup.

DRIED OVERGROWN ZUCCHINI To manage overgrown zukes, cut into sections, peel, remove seeds, shred, and dry. Don’t blanch. Use in soup and spaghetti sauce and in casseroles (mix with shredded cheese), where it will soak up broth and thicken.

Canning. The USDA does not recommend canning summer squash. However, here are 2 recipes for summer squash combos that are recommended by the USDA.

COOKING: Mary Ann Shepherd, Del Mar, CA, wrote me: “Last year we really over programmed on zucchini, and one of our house guests reported that when you visit the Shepherds, you have zucchini for breakfast (bread), lunch (raw in salads and pickled), dinner (as a vegetable-grated and stir-fried with mushrooms) and dessert (chocolate cake) as well as for canapes (raw sticks marinated in salad dressing or raw sticks to dunk with), and she expected the furniture to be made from it next year!”

RECIPE IDEAS: With zucchini that has been harvested young, frying, baking, or steaming give you better results than boiling because summer squash is mostly water anyway. You don’t have to peel ‘em unless they’re old and tough skinned.

Raw. Serve raw in sticks with a dip. Or serve grated or chunked in a tossed salad with a zesty dressing. Or make into a salad dressing: peel, de-seed, chop 2 or 3 large cucumbers, liquefy in blender, add a few squirts lemon juice and a dash of garlic powder (or 1 small minced clove), and thicken with tahini.

Sauteed. Slice and cook in butter 10 minutes. Or slice, dip in egg batter and then flour, and French-fry. Or fry in butter in a pan with chopped onions. Or mix chunks with chopped parsley and basil and add to an omelet. Or stir-fry with onions, carrots, meat strips, garlic, and a bay leaf.

Or stir-fry with sliced mushrooms, sprouts, beef slices, tomato slices, and soy sauce. Or saute sliced zuke with precooked chopped onion and bacon, canned tomatoes, and a bit of seasoning (garlic, oregano, basil, salt, and pepper) until all is cooked and hot . Or stir-fry shredded summer squash and onions together in a little tamari with a pinch of curry, or use tomato sauce instead of tamari and add a pinch of basil and oregano (from Ruth of Bonaire).

Baked. Or bake in an oiled casserole dish (with tomatoes, garlic, and basil or fennel) with Parmesan cheese on top. Or bake in a casserole dish halved or quartered summer squash layered with pork chops and halved onions. Or slice into 1 / 2 -inch slices, put into a baking dish, dot with butter, sprinkle with salt and finely chopped onion, add just enough water (or cream) to cover the bottom of the dish, cover, and bake until tender.

Or slice into a baking dish, add enough tomato juice to barely cover, and bake-or cover with homemade tomato sauce mixed with a little soft tofu (this makes a good main dish). Or grate and add to any bread mix.

Boiled. Boil in a little water until tender; then drain, season with butter, and serve. Or cook, mash, season, and serve Or boil briefly with cut-up green peppers and tomato, garlic, and oregano.

Or simmer chunks with onions, tomatoes, and fennel until tender. Or slice zuke into frying pan; add 1 T. tamari, 1 T. water, a bunch of sliced green onions, and 1 T. chopped fresh herbs for each zuke; cover and steam until tender (about 5 minutes).

Radishes are the vegetables that spring-starved fanatics get out and plant because they’re early and quick-you might have the first ones to eat as soon as 3 weeks after planting.

Children love to grow these brassica roots, because they grow so easily in a pot or outdoors. The quick red globe kinds are the most commonly grown, often to mark the rows of slower-germinating plants like carrots.

Or you can plant them with parsnips or parsley; the robust radish sprouts help those frailer creatures break through the soil’s crust. All parts of the radish are edible (but the leaves aren’t usually eaten), and there’s much you can do with them

VARIETIES

Raphanus sativus is your basic radish, but there are many different varieties (red, white, yellow) with maturing dates ranging from 20 to 60 days. (Horseradish is not a radish.) The red radishes don’t usually do as well once the days get short, but there are winter varieties that can be planted in the fall. Some radish varieties look and are used rather like turnips.

One almost rootless variety is grown for its green top, which is used in salad, and one is grown for its seed pods! Every major Asian country developed its own favorite radish variety centuries ago, and Asians include radishes in their daily diet much more than we do. Available from Bountiful Gardens, Cook’s Garden, Kitazawa (winters!), Nichols, Park, Shumway, and Territorial.

Red Radishes. The short “cherry” radish is the most familiar one in the United States: red skin, white flesh, green leaves, cherry-sized, quite hot. These are fast and easy, best for container growing. Use sliced (not peeled) in salads or as raw, edible garnishes.

You can also boil them or add them to soup, as you would carrots. There are also long, red varieties. Use them raw like the small ones, or roast with meat, as you would turnips, or chop and saute them together with other vegetables.

White or “Winter” Radishes. These close relatives of thereds are generally larger, milder in flavor, harder to grow, and longer to mature. They also stay crisp longer-several weeks instead of several days. Icicle, a 4-inch white, is the quickest-to-mature long white; it straddles the categories of red and white.

The other whites are the true “winter radishes,” so called because they are often planted in midor late summer, harvested in fall, and stored during winter in damp sand. Winter radishes taste better cooked than the summer ones do. One of the best winter radishes is daikon.

Daikon. This is a very large (2-4 inches across, 6-20 inches long), white, Asian radish variety (Raphanus sativus longi pinnatus.) With its peppery taste (milder than the reds), it is the most popular Japanese vegetable, a fixture in Japanese cuisine.

But writer Lane Morgan and some other folks say that daikon has a problem in the United States because it’s so attractive to the cabbage-root-maggot butterfly. Plant in late summer (1 inch deep). They take a long time. Seeds are available from Cook’s Garden, Johnny’s, and Kitazawa.

Harvest, store, and cook like any root vegetable. Daikon contains diastase, a starch-digesting enzyme, so it goes well with a heavy-starch meal. Daikon leaves can be substituted in any cooked greens recipe. In Japanese edible art, daikon is carved into shapes such as a rectangular fishnet made of one continuous peeling of the daikon that is then laid over seafood dishes.

The Japanese serve grated or slivered daikon with raw fish on rice (sushi) and with rice in general. Daikon can also be slivered and made into Instant Pickles. Or substitute in regular pickle recipes. Or use raw slices in green salad, stirfry, or cook in soup.

Sakurajima. It takes 70 days to mature and needs as much room to grow as does a tomato plant. I’ve heard that a single specimen can get to 10, 20, or even 50 lb. in size. This variety is not eaten raw because it is extremely hot. Cook it turnip-style. Plant seeds 2 feet apart.

Lobak. This is a Korean radish, spicy rather than mild. It’s white, with some pale green shading at base. It’s as wide as a potato and is 6-8 inches long. You can cut into strips and serve with a dip, or use in the famous Korean relish called kim chee.

It’s good chopped into an omelet, sauteed as a side dish with carrots and onions, sliced in an avocado salad, or cooked in a soup.

Black Radishes. There is a Chinese black radish and a Black Spanish one. Some black radishes look like daikon (7-8 inches in length, 2 -3 inches in diameter). Some are turnip-shaped. The black ones are also “winter radishes,” so plant them like winter radishes and cook like turnips. Seed is available from William Dam.

Rat-Tail Radish. This “podding radish” is raised in order to harvest the long (9 inches or more!) seed pods, which develop late in the season. This is a very uncommon but fascinating- looking variety of radish. The seed pods are long and beanlike, but they are wide at one end and dwindle to a tip at the other. Rat-tail radishes are grown just like other radishes. Harvest after only a few weeks, while still tender.

Use like edible-podded peas, or stir-fry or pickle them. The taste is moderately hot, like other radishes. Seed is available from Bountiful, Cook’s Garden, and Seeds of Change

Growing celery (Apium graveolens duke) is slow and challenging.It’s not a basic sustenance plant like carrots, potatoes, and tomatoes. But garden-fresh celery tastes better than any store-bought celery, so you might want to try for it.

VARIETIES

Don’t plant the type of celery seed that’s used for flavoring; that variety doesn’t make an edible stalk, but it quickly produces abundant seed. Commercial-type celery is better adapted for intensive commercial growing in a suitable part of the country (celery probably originally grew in a swamp) than for your garden.

Home gardeners may prefer one of the “nonblanching” varieties or “cutting celery,” an ancestor to the commercial variety . . .

Cutting Celery

Lane Morgan: “We have good soil and coolish weather, so I’ve tried all kinds of celeries. Of all that temperamental clan, I think the easiest for the home gardener is ‘leaf celery’.

Nichols sells it as French Celery Dinant. It has thin, leafy stalks that are too strong-tasting to eat raw but are fine for flavoring soup, tomato sauce, etc. [Use half as much to compensate for its stronger taste.]

It is quicker, more disease resistant, and less prone to rot than the big blanching types.” It’s hardier too; if mulched, it can get through most winters to grow again in the spring.

WHEN TO PLANT

Celery takes 115 to 135 days to mature, and it likes cool weather. In northern areas with a cool summer, you have a chance of growing it in summer if you start it indoors or in a cold frame sometime in February through April. Then transplant to the garden.

On average, celery plants spend 10 to 12 weeks indoors before transplanting to the garden. In a long-season, temperate climate, plant directly outside mid-April through May-that gets you a fall crop. It doesn’t like hot weather, so in the South plant for maturing around late November or even late December.

HOW TO PLANT

Plant in very rich soil that has lots of manure and is loose and loamy, because celery is one of the heaviest-feeding plants. Commercial crops are usually grown on marsh or peat soils after they have been drained.

Make a little ditch. Fill it with two-thirds fine-textured dirt and one-third rich compost. Plant on that, % inch deep. Don’t let the seedbed dry out even once until the plants are up, 10 to 15 days later. Then ease off on the water lest you drown them.

You can start a multitude of plants in a small box. When the second leaves appear, transplant 1 1/ 2  to 2 inches apart into larger boxes; then gradually harden them  by exposure to open air and sunshine on warm days.

When your weather is well past the last frost and dependably warm and the little celery plants are 5 or 6 inches high, set them out in the garden 12 inches apart, rows 18 inches apart.

If you live in an area where you can plant the seed directly into the garden, a light mulch over it will help it grow. After the plants come up, carefully remove the mulch.

Fall celery is planted in the garden and then thinned in place or transplanted to better spacing when no more than 3 inches high. Celery takes a lot of water; it prefers flood irrigation to sprinkling because its roots are adapted to pulling water out of soaked bogs. Keep weeds out.

SAVING SEED

Celery is a self-fertile, insect-pollinated biennial. It will cross with celeriac or other celeries. In cold zones, choose your best plants in the fall. Dig them out, being careful not to harm roots.

Replant them in dirt in something you can keep in a root cellar, the above-ground part mulched with straw. Replant in spring after last frost; trim rotted parts. In warm zones, plant for seed in July and transplant in January.

Set out 2 feet apart because secondyear growth gets high and wide. Later come tiny white blooms; still later, brown seeds. To avoid loss on the ground, shake the top heads (which mature seed first) into a bag once in a while. Cut and dry on cloth or paper. Seed viable 5 years.

HARVESTING

YOU can rob the plant of a stalk or leaf anytime through its growing period without ruining it. You can use harvesting as a way of thinning as soon as the plants get big enough to be worth the trouble.

Half-grown celery is just as edible as the full-grown stuff. Cut plants at ground level and just leave the roots in the dirt to become compost. If your winters are mild, celery will survive in your garden to spring. Pick side stalks as needed. In this case, don’t take off the entire head; that way the stalks can stay fresh and keep coming.

Root Cellar/Pit Storage

Dig before hard frosts and store in boxes, covered with slightly damp sand or dirt, in your root cellar. Or leave in the ground, cover entire row with at least 6 inches of dirt, and put a heavy mulch like straw over that.

Or transplant to a cold frame in late fall, closely planted side by side, or transplant to a box of damp earth in your root cellar. Don’t wash before storage. Don’t store with turnips or cabbage. Ideally, keep as cool as possible without actually freezing. Celery will keep 1 to 2 months.

Freezing

To freeze celery, you have to cook it first; some people don’t like it that way. If you don’t mind it, cut across the rib into about 1-inch sections. Steam-blanch 3 minutes, chill, drain, and package. You can freeze leaves to add to stews and soups-but freeze them separately.