but time yields to no one and it soon became the moment to start the summer vegetables, like peppers and eggplants, and the basils, and to order some of the Southeast Asian herbs. The seeds were planted in flats and kept on a warming mat a few inches from fluorescent lights. Germination was good and the plants were moved up to four-inch plastic pots in mid-April, but because it was so cold, they were kept under lights for a few weeks more. Finally they were so big they needed to be moved into larger containers and outside into my cold frame. Even April was very cold, so the plants were not put out until mid-May, when nighttime temperatures were finally above 55°F.
The weather remained colder than usual and July was the coolest on record—mostly overcast days in the high 60s. Some of the vegetables did splendidly in spite of the coolness including the squashes and cucumbers, the soybeans, leek flower, and onions. The eggplants and peppers did better in August as the weather improved—many days in the low 80s. However, my eggplants started to show signs of fusarium wilt (leaves randomly turning brown and the stems showing brown rings inside when cut.) They were in full production and it was painful but one by one we needed to pull them out. The yard-long beans, malabar spinach, and bitter melons, which all need hot weather, were still only three feet tall and never did produce. But all was not lost, by September the baby corn was ready—delicious—the hot peppers were in full production—spicy—and the cucumbers—over productive—and we were giving them away to all the neighbors. The ‘Siam Queen’ basil, bunching onions, amaranth, and the shisho all did well. And the winter squash ‘Autumn Cup’ was extremely productive and ran all over the garden. The squash themselves were rich and sweet.
All in all, the garden was a success but more stressful than most with all the cold weather. When I plant these hot-weather-loving vegetables again, I will start them under plastic hoops so they get more heat and I’ll plant my eggplants in containers. As always, the gardening adventure continues.
In my back garden (opposite) I designed a small herb garden that included the Asian herbs; mioga ginger, Oriental chives, lemon grass, and even a small container of experimental wasabe. (It is real tricky to grow and after a few months is up and has died.) Also in the beds were bush basil and winter savory. Last year’s summer Asian garden (above) had many successes: the bunching onions, lots of Japanese cucumbers and squashes, Thai and lemon basils, hot peppers, eggplants, and leek flowers. It was not hot enough for my malabar spinach, bitter melons, and yard-long beans to grow large enough to produce much.
Plants in the Warm-Season Creasy Asian Garden
Amaranth: ‘Green Leaf,’ ‘Red Leaf
Basil: Holy, ‘Thai’
Bunching onions: ‘Deep Purple’
Corn: ‘Baby Asian’
Cucumber: ‘Kidma,’ ‘Orient Express,’ ‘Suhyo’
Eggplant: ‘Millionaire,’ ‘Ping Tong’
Green onions: ‘Ishikura’
Luffa: Ridged
Peppers: ‘Cayenne,’ ‘Hot Asian,’ ‘Santaka’
Shisho: Green leaf
Shisho: Red leaf
Soybeans: ‘Maple Leaf
Yard-long beans: ‘Red Seeded,’ ‘White Seeded’
Winter squash: ‘Autumn Cup’
the Cunningham garden
David Cunningham lives in Vermont on a beautiful farm that sits on a knoll with a breathtaking view of the countryside.
David grew up there, and I couldn’t help thinking that he was clearly destined to go into horticulture. We sat down to plan the Asian garden together as soon as I arrived. Though I didn’t pay much attention to the information at the time, David mentioned that his mother was a wolf preservationist—and that the garden was encircled by a wolf yard, then surrounded by a field of sheep.
I returned in midsummer to see the garden, and at that time the wolves were much more in evidence. In fact, to visit the garden we had to exchange places with them; the two wolves went into the house while we went to the garden. Though the idea of being in close proximity to them unnerved me a bit, the wolves were actually quite lovable and shy.
In the garden, which is protected by an electric fence to keep out the wolves, David’s horticultural skills were abundantly manifest. The soil was beautiful—crumbly and dark—and obviously well cared for, and row upon row of healthy Asian vegetables attested to its quality. David told me that long ago the soil had been clay based but that in the early 1950s it started receiving care as a vegetable garden. In winter, the area is planted with winter rye, which in spring is grazed by sheep, and over the years the soil has been amended with mulches and compost. A few years earlier, David had incorporated twenty-five bales of peat moss into the plot. Always careful about keeping the soil healthy, the Cunninghams have kept planks on the paths to avoid packing down the soil because they plan to use it for beds in the future.
The overall vegetable garden is about thirty by forty feet in size, and David had planted a little less than half with Asian vegetables. We started reviewing the garden at the north end, which was planted with three varieties of edible-podded peas: ‘Dwarf Gray Sugar,’ ‘Mammoth Melting,’ and ‘Oregon Sugar Pod.’ “If I had to pick a favorite,’’ David told me, “I think it would be ‘Dwarf Gray Sugar,’ because it’s such a vigorous grower. It has reddish-purple flowers and the pods are very tasty. At one point, I thought I was going to lose all the peas, because we had a week of temperatures topping 90. All the varieties looked pretty sad for a while, but they perked right up again after it cooled down.”
David went on to describe the six varieties of cabbage-type greens he had planted in the next few rows. ‘Pac Choy’ has white stems, an open form, and doesn’t make heads. ‘Tyfon,’ a cross between Chinese cabbage and turnips, has a mild mustardlike flavor that, according to David, is good in salads. ‘Spring A-1’ is a cabbage with a medium-tight head and ‘WR 90’ an upright cabbage with a very tight head. ‘Winter Queen’ is a cabbage good for fall harvest, and ‘Tat Tsai’ is a dark green nonheading plant with spoon-shaped leaves growing out of its base.
In the next rows, David had planted the Japanese herb mitsuba, an aromatic parsleylike herb, and ‘Green Lance,’ a Chinese type of broccoli that David likes using in stir-fries. The head of this broccoli is open and the plant’s stem is mainly what is eaten. He had also planted two types of mustard: ‘Red Giant,’ a striking, somewhat spicy vegetable, and ‘Savanna’ mustard spinach, a mild-flavored green. The variety of daikon in the garden was ‘April Cross.’ David described it as very tender and uniform with no pith, woodiness, or hollowness. “When you start eating it,” he said, “it doesn’t seem hot, but it builds up. We eat it in stir-fries, but we’ve had it raw in salads to and are really happy with it.”
David Cunningham harvests cabbage from his Asian garden.
David was about to start his fall garden during my visit and was so pleased with the summer’s experiment that he wanted to try more varieties of the
