of true Italian cooking is still going to have to plant a garden!
Like in much of Europe, small farmers’ markets are very popular in Italy. The number and quality of similar markets in the United States is growing quickly, and they are great places for gardeners to learn more about vegetable varieties that grow well in their climates.
A woman strings cherry tomatoes in preparation for drying. Drying is the most common use for cherry tomatoes in Italy, and it is most associated with the hot, arid, areas in the south.
How to Grow an Italian Garden
The majority of vegetables and herbs planted in an Italian vegetable garden, and the methods for growing them, are very similar to the crops and methods used in most gardens. In Italy small plots of ground are cultivated near the home, and individual vegetables are most often grown in rows. Many of the vegetables are comfortably familiar to us, namely, tomatoes, beans, zucchini, cucumbers, eggplant, broccoli, lettuce, and peppers. In fact, sometimes they grow the identical variety.
But as a rule, Italians grow slightly different varieties of our favorite vegetables. The Italian tomato varieties are most often paste types, the sweet peppers are frequently long and thin rather than short and blocky, the green beans are often flat romano types or curved anellinos, and the eggplants are generally smaller and either elongated or round. In addition, in Italy gardeners grow a number of vegetables and herbs that are less common here: including Tuscan black kale (lacinato); many kinds of cutting and heading chicories; borlotto-type, pink-striped shelling beans; large flat and purple artichokes; ‘Tromboncino,’ elongated squashes; sweet fennel; all sorts of greens; and many varieties of large- and small-leafed basils. (And while not easily grown, another Italian favorite, capers, can be grown here in mild climates.)
This harvest includes Italian parsley; basil; paste and the fluted, flat ‘Costoluto Genovese’ tomatoes; ‘Milano’ zucchini; ‘Violetta Lunga’ eggplant; and ‘Rossa di Milano’ and ‘Giallo di Milano’ onions.
One of my early specialty gardens included many vegetables and herbs enjoyed in Italy. The beds were filled with tall, purple sprouting broccolis, beets, chard, arugula, chicories, and lettuces as well as rosemary, oregano, fennel, thyme, and parsley.
In addition, Italians harvest many plants from the wild and grow some of them in their gardens. Italian gardeners grow and harvest “baby greens” and garden blanch (deprive the plants of light to make them more tender and less bitter) many of the chicories, endive, and cardoon.
To enjoy many of the Italian specialties in your own garden, you must order both the Italian varieties of common vegetables and the more unusual vegetables and herbs from specialty seed companies. See Resources (page 109) for the names and urls of seed companies and nurseries.
Because Italy is on the Mediterranean, its climate is characterized by long, hot summers with very little rain, fairly mild winters, and a long spring and fall. The long growing season allows the Italian gardener to plant slow-maturing plants, such as some of the radicchios, many garlic varieties, and some varieties of sweet peppers; to plant vegetables that grow best in a long, cool spring, such as fava beans and cardoon; to enjoy the tender perennial artichoke; and to sun-dry tomatoes with ease. In the United States a similar climate is found in parts of California, Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico. American gardeners in other states who want to grow these plants sometimes must make cultural compromises. Gardeners in the humid South need to plant especially disease-resistant varieties and will have the most success if they provide afternoon shade for species that suffer in the heat. Gardeners at high altitudes and in cool northern areas will do beautifully with some of the spring and fall vegetables but need to provide extra heat for tomatoes, peppers, melons, and eggplant. Here black plastic mulches, windbreaks, south-facing masonry walls, and floating row covers help raise the ambient temperature by 5º–10ºF/-15º to -12.2ºC.
Nothing is healthier or more flavorful than vegetables, harvested at their peak, that have gone fresh from the garden to the kitchen and table.
A selection of fresh vegetables featuring varieties of onions, peppers, and the tomatoes for which Italy is famous.
I find that to fully appreciate any garden or cooking situation enough to write about it, I need to grow and cook with most of the featured plants. To this end, I have enthusiastically grown and cooked with hundreds of Italian vegetables and herbs and visited many sumptuous gardens. I offer you my own experiences with these wonderful varieties in the pages that follow.
Picking & Growing Wild Greens
It is difficult to delve into Italian cooking without coming across references to foraging and serving wild greens and herbs. Generations of Italians have stayed close to the land, often under very lean conditions. For their survival, and because many outlying towns remained isolated, rural Italians continued to harvest from the wild after much of Europe had ceased doing so. For many years this practice had little status, and the plants gathered, like borage and mustard, were considered peasant food. Nowadays upscale restaurants serve many of these “wild” greens, and it’s not unusual to find market stalls in Italy offering them too. Some of the greens are still gathered from the wild, but more often they are grown in market gardens. Italian cookbooks also call for wild greens these days, and proponents all over the world see consuming these nutrition-packed greens—whether grown domestically or in the wild—as a part of a healthy lifestyle. Even though some of these greens are not widely available outside of Italy, as a gardener you are in the fortunate position of being able to grow most of them yourself. Further, gardeners are better able to gather plants from the wild because they have the skills to recognize different species more readily than does a nongardener.
A home garden in Italy backs up to the Alps. In this cooler climate, summer gardens include broccoli, lettuces, leeks, onions, cabbages, and fava beans.
These plants may be uncommon in markets, but it’s not because they are hard to grow. After all, they grow untended in many parts of the world. In fact, give some of them a chance and they can become thugs and crowd out their weaker domestic cousins. As a gardener, you probably already know a few “up close and personal,” namely, dandelions and purslane (one of the pigweeds).
Over the years there have been dozens of plants associated with wild harvesting, some used as potherbs or vegetables, others used raw in salads. In Italian these plants are referred to as erbe selvatiche. The more familiar ones include arugula (Eruca vesicaria, Diplotaxis tenuifolia); borage (Borago officinalis); burnet (Sanguisorba minor);
