Make it sparkle!

Our newly planted gardens should be beginning to show signs of growing. We are having a warm January so far. The reports of El Niño call for a wetter-than-normal month. We have to wait and see how that pans out. For the present, let’s keep on planting something new each week.

Last week our main two crops were broccoli and cabbage. Sixty years ago very few people knew or understood broccoli. It was an Italian specialty. Now it’s a popular veggie with great health benefits. Fresh broccoli from the garden tastes great. It lends itself to an unbelievable amount of cooked dishes, both Eastern and Western.

Cabbage is another wonderful vegetable. There are the basic green varieties as well as the tender loose-leaf Savoy cabbage from France and Belgium and red cabbage from Denmark and Germany. Today’s hybrids are softer-leafed and a welcome addition from fresh coleslaws to dishes like sweet and sour red Cabbage and Russian Cabbage Soup. Or, just finely shred it and add to fresh salads.

This week I think it would be great to plant cauliflower and kale as our main crops. In between them, plant butter lettuce, spinach, frisée endive and bok choi.

Cauliflower takes a bit more effort to grow, but no garden this time of the year is complete without it. It comes in many colors (green, purple, orange) and different shapes. The plants need to be tied off at the top to keep the sun off the heads. No worries now, though; we will cover them as the plants progress and the time is right.

Cut-up raw cauliflower is a great snack that goes with a wide variety of dips, a welcome addition to a fresh vegetable plate. It is wonderful cooked in stir fries or in soups and stews.

Kale is a long-lived, winter-hardy crop, easy to grow and a powerful source of calcium and multiple minerals. The tender young leaves go great in fresh salads; use it to embellish soups, in stir fries and even make a great calzone stuffed with kale. We should eat some kale every day this time of the year.

Butter lettuce is soft, tender and delicious.

Spinach has a real place in our home gardens. Commercial spinach is hybridized for shipping and its leaves are thicker and tougher. The home varieties are more tender and succulent, a great source of iron and chlorophyll. From fresh salads to dishes like spinach rice with feta cheese and to pastries filled with it, the usage is unlimited.

Fresh frisée endive is a frilly addition to a salad, with a very slight tanginess to add sparkle wherever it is added.

Lastly this week is one of my favorites: bok choi. I like both the baby and the large varieties. As the standard bok choi grows, I love to pull off the outer stalks and munch on them. They are tender, sweet and full of juice. Yum!

All these plants are heavy feeders, so be sure to have your organic fertilizers in the ground before you plant. Also, because of the threat of rain, don’t forget to mulch three inches around all newly planted crops. Now is a good time to add three or four flowers here and there in the new garden. Calendulas, stock, pansies and violas make the “all green” garden sparkle with color. These flowers near the cabbages help them not to want to go to seed themselves and helps reduce splitting of the heads.

Cabbages do better if they are not over-watered, as this makes them tend to rot or split. Keep them happy but don’t drown them.

Additionally, this is not a bad time to buy a packet of seeds of Nantes carrots and a good red beet. Scratch a short and shallow trench somewhere on the edge of the garden. Plant the carrot seeds a half-inch apart and six or eight beet seeds two inches apart. Cover very gently so the seed is not too deep. These will come up and be there when you least expect them. They are a fun reward.

As we progress in the next few weeks the variety of what we grow will expand to offer us some fun varieties of food. We will inject the growing needs and cultural practices of each type of vegetable as it gains in stature.

Next week we will get into some pruning and planting of bare root trees, vines and shrubs. Make sure as we go in and out of these Santa Ana conditions that nothing wilts. Watering in the early morning or late day is best. Before you can look around we will be harvesting the outer leaves of the various greens. Don’t be too impatient, but growth with the weather we are having should be real steady, once the plants are established.

Have a great week.