Great Greens!

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The immigrant is also a slow grower and takes nearly two months to mature (you'd be wise, therefore, to intersperse a New Zealand spinach planting with a short-season crop like radishes or leaf lettuce). When the potherb has matured enough to harvest, be sure not to cut its tall center shoot. Instead, collect your kitchen fixin's by picking only the young side leaves and leaving the main stalk unbroken ... to reap a continuous, all—summer-long spinach yield.

For all the differences between the two plants, New Zealand spinach leaves taste exactly like "regular" spinach greenery: The youngest side shoots are good raw, the older blades have a bitter toughness, and the cooking-size foliage tastes just right in prepared dishes ... such as a simple omelet.

To make one of these tummy—pleasing egg courses, first simmer a half cup of the "kiwi" spinach in water with just a small amount of butter, a half clove of fresh garlic, a pinch of coriander, and salt and pepper to taste. Then put this filling aside while you whip up four seasoned-to-taste eggs and slowly cook them in a large, well-buttered frying pan. When the eggs are almost done (you can slowly "twirl" the pan around—and even lift the omelet's edge here and there with a spatula to make sure the eggs are cooking evenly), spoon in the spinach mixture, flip one half of the "yellow pancake" over on top of the other, finish cooking, and—yum!—serve.

TURNIP AND BEET TOPS

Sure, everybody knows that turnips (Brassica rapa) and beets (Beta vulgaris) are good garden root crops, but not all folks realize that the vegetables provide a bonus harvest: fresh greens! (In fact, some varieties of turnips are grown for their tops alone.) So if you plant a lot of either crop, you can enjoy young, tasty greens and small, tender roots ... every time you thin your plant rows. (Be careful, though, not to gather leaves from the particular turnip and beet plants you want to raise as full-fledged root crops.)

Both turnip and beet greens can be sowed early in the spring. However, turnips aren't a good hot-weather crop and will need to be replanted if you want a fall harvest ... beets—on the other hand—will keep on growing throughout those long hot days of August.

As to eatin', turnip greens taste especially good when boiled up with some of their young bulbs (cook these crunchy rootlets in the pot a bit to pre-tenderize them before you add the plant tops), and steamed beet greens are often served up with butter and lemon juice.

SWISS CHARD

I told you that some varieties of turnips are grown just for their "toppings", right? Well, Swiss chard is actually a big-leaved, non bulbous-root-producing type of beet (Beta vulgaris, variety cicla). The greatest virtue of this beautiful plant (besides its cooking versatility and easy "grow-ability") is its impressive hardiness. Chard is both fairly frost-resistant and able to bear well all through the summer. Just keep plucking the outer leaves off the stalks, and the plants will give you mild-flavored greens from spring, through summer, into fall, and—since the plant is a perennial on into the next growing year as well!

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