EATING FRESH ALL YEAR ROUND

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Kohlrabi, radish, and turnip are delightful in summer salads. I can eat any of these right in the garden after wiping the soil off on my jeans. Radishes grow so fast that I can't keep up with succession planting to keep new ones coming. We eat them fresh from the garden as soon as the first ones get a little larger than peas. I always plant radishes with parsnips, carrots, and parsley. The radishes mark the row and shelter the slow-to-germinate crops. When the later crops need the space, I harvest all the radishes to make room. That may mean I've got five pounds of radishes. They keep quite well for up to a month if topped, washed, and put in a plastic bag in the refrigerator.

Sometimes, just to show off, I grow king-size radishes. They are regular radishes, cherry bell is my favorite, but when grown in good soil and mulched they can get almost as big as tennis balls. It's no big deal to grow them that large. The big deal is when someone eats one expecting it to be pithy or woody and finding it to have a perfect texture and superb taste. The mulch assures stable moisture and keeps the soil temperature from fluctuating as much as it would otherwise. The results are really special.

We don't store kohlrabi, radishes, or turnips as a rule. Kohlrabi can be pickled. Daikon radishes and rutabagas provide radish and turnip flavor in the winter and store easily in the root cellar.

ASPARAGUS & ZUCCHINI

There are two vegetables that I really love in season, asparagus and zucchini. If spring is kind, I can eat my first asparagus on my birthday, May 10. It is just great steamed with nothing on it, or with butter, or served with a little dressing. The harvest is only about a month long, but what a month that is. It is especially wonderful because it is the first fresh, home-grown green for many months. I don't crave asparagus until some time in April, which is just right. I have a month of expectation and a month of ecstasy. Asparagus can be frozen or canned but it's not anything that I will ever be motivated to do.

Commercial growers harvest asparagus by cutting it off below the ground. I presume this is done to get more weight. They then let the ends dry out which makes them inedible. I cut the early asparagus below ground level because I want to get an extra bite or two from the first pickings. Later I will cut at ground level or snap them off. When I bring the asparagus into the house I bundle it together with two rubber bands. Then I cut the ends off and stand the asparagus in water in the refrigerator. This keeps it fresh until you eat it, and you won't wind up with any inedible fibrous ends that way.

Zucchini grows so fast that once it starts coming in you have to harvest it every other day. When I had a market garden and supplied restaurants with zucchini, I harvested every day and a half to get perfectly sized vegetables. I think they are best about six inches long.

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