GROW YOUR GARDEN "UP" AS NATURE INTENDED

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When trained to grow up, tall vines will shade the lower few inches of any plant growing less than two feet away from their north side. But well-supported pole beans, sweet corn, and caged tomatoes don't mind; their lower leaves dry and turn yellow by August in any event.

The tomatoes go at the front of the "up"—trained section of the garden, and I begin planting green onions, radishes, carrots, and beets practically at the foot of the bins.

Its advisable to replace any "up"—trained vine's ground-covering/moisture-retaining effect with a thick straw mulch over the exposed hills. Then, so long as each leaf gets full sun, the crops will thrive.

Yams can be grown up, but they are so vigorous you need to devote more support to them than they are worth—or so I have found. White-potato foliage is technically a vine, but it is too low and scrubby to attempt to grow up.

Growing "Short Greens"

Finally, at the very front of the garden, where it is convenient to water frequently with steeped compost "tea" or another nitrogen-rich concoction, I grow the flip side of "up": a foot-wide row of mixed greens, including leaf lettuces in several shapes and colors, mustards, peppery cress, spicy endives and escaroles interspersed with clumps of tangy chives and an occasional miniclump of superspicy wild garlic transplanted from where it grows chive-style in the meadow.

I scatter a mixture of seed on finely screened soil, cover lightly with fine compost, compress well, and keep moist till seedlings are up. When the plants are wellestablished at two or three inches high, I pull off the outer rosette of first true leaves (that tend to be tough and bitter). Then I begin harvesting the outer leaves of large plants and cutting smaller ones at ground level.

The young plants make lush new leaves for several weeks—so long as they are kept well watered, fertilized, and trimmed low. If I neglect the harvest for several days, I will trim the greens with the mower rather than let them grow tall enough to bolt and grow bitter. By culling and replanting small sections of the row every week, I can have greens through all but the hottest, driest summers and well into fall. Indeed, for many years now, when I've had more energy than extra grocery money, I've grown and harvested short greens from cold frames spring and fall ...for fresh garden salads eight to nine months out of the year.

I'd thought that this labor-intensive way of growing the youngest, tenderest salads imaginable was a close secret among us home organic gardeners. But, even in the sticks, the chain supermarkets are featuring big plastic bags of mixed baby greens being sold as mesclun.

I'm told that mesclun is European French (as opposed to honest homegrown Cajun or Canuck) for—you guessed it—"mixed baby greens." It is jetted in from California and sells for $7.50 a pound. That is 750% of the farmers market price for the self-same greens sold with a plain English label.

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