Plant No-Pamper Perennial Produce

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Wait until the second year to begin harvesting the larger stalks from your rhubarb plants (twist as you pull them from the ground, and they'll come up easily). "Larger" means stalks (not measuring the leaf) 10 inches or more in length and an inch through at the base. Rhubarb is usually one of the very first plants that you can eat in the spring and its stalks are tender enough to enjoy for anywhere from four to six weeks. CAUTION: Only the stems of the plants—NOT ITS LEAVES NOR ITS ROOTS—are edible.

A good rhubarb bed will bear for 10 years or more ... but most gardeners like to divide and replant their patches every five years or so. At-that, few vegetables give so much and ask so little in return.

DANDELIONS

Why would anyone want to cultivate dandelions when they grow wild so profusely? Because [1] far too many of the lawns and fields that wild dandelions now spring up in have been chemically treated and who wants to eat something like that, and [2] cultivated dandelions-just like cultivated asparagus and cultivated rhubarb-can be tastier, more tender, and otherwise more palatable than their volunteer cousins.

Cultivated dandelions will grow almost anyplace that the wild ones will ... which is to say, almost anyplace. All the larger seed companies now seem to sell packets of dandelion seeds ... so leaf through a few catalogs and try the varieties that especially appeal to you.

Dandelions prefer a soil pH of 6,0 to 8.0. Work manure, rock phosphate, and other natural fertilizers into the earth and then plant your seeds in rows 18 inches apart. Thin the sprouts to stand a foot from each other as they develop and—at least in the more frigid sections of the country—cover them during the winter with three or four inches of mulch. Repeat annually and that's about all the care the hardy plants will need ... forever!

Dandelion leaves (greens), crowns, and roots may all be eaten in a variety of ways, especially in the spring and fall. Surprisingly enough, dandelion greens from cultivated plants (unlike their wild relatives) are also generally tender and flavorful right through the summer and the roots of the cultivated varieties can even be dug up and eaten in the winter. Consult any good wild foods cookbook

BAMBOO

Although it's a mainstay of Chinese, Philippine, and other Asiatic schools of cooking, bamboo is hardly known as a vegetable on this continent. More's the pity. Bamboo—or"cane" as it's sometimes called in our southern states -does very well in almost any section of the country where there's rich, well-drained soil and plenty of water. (If there's any complaint about cane, in fact, it's that the plant sometimes does too well: Once given a start, it's been known to "take over" whole gardens and river bottoms.) The ideal site for a stand of bamboo is a rich loam adjacent to a brook and partially shaded by a canopy of large trees.

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