The danger of frost past, full energies devoted to the changeover from spring’s frost tolerant displays to summer’s heat loving luxuriant textures and colors. Don’t forget your vegetables! Was never directed at me at the family dining table. My siblings, yes, my father, likely, but not me. Besides being a nearly flawless child, I loved my vegetables: couldn’t get enough of them, still can’t. However, I am not a vegetable gardener: that is too much work. Just as I fancy myself a cook, not a baker: that’s chemistry.
Jonathan Wright, a younger, nicer gardener on staff at Chanticleer re-introduced this old dog to his vegetables. Cool season annuals, such as cabbage, kale, chard and mustard. Beautiful colors, bodacious textures and overtime performances from March to now June in the volatile Mid-Atlantic States.
Like my first taste of rhubarb, I didn’t gobble the whole thing down, I nibbled.
So too this year I started with a Tuscan kale in my bedding schemes. At this point, I have removed the coarse textured blue purple mass that was the kale, co-workers and garden guests rescuing the new tender portions from my compost bucket for a meal later. Walking through Jonathan’s gardens, I am dumbfounded by how lush and present the foliage of red mustard is in his spring display beds. Cabbages of different foliage selections are fulfilling groundcover roles for him in the garden. Soon they will bolt, the heat forcing a rapid bloom and subsequent decline.
However we will have all benefited by consuming and enjoying Jonathan’s vegetables.
Latest posts by Dan Benarcik (see all)
- Out With The Bold, In With The New - June 16, 2008
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