Pay Dirt by John Tullock

Author:John Tullock
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: F+W Media
Published: 2010-04-11T04:00:00+00:00

Radish ‘French Breakfast’

Rhubarb

Another in the “grow if you have the room” category, rhubarb is a true perennial. It is grown from root cuttings. Like asparagus, it requires establishment in rich, fertile, well-drained soil for a couple of seasons before you can begin to harvest the juicy stems. High oxalic acid content renders the leaves inedible. Rhubarb has its fans, and the plants are quite decorative in summer. But the market is small and the harvest period rather brief.

Scallions

Green onions are so mundane, they are often overlooked by market growers. Bunches of crisp scallions, freshly pulled with their roots still on, sell well when displayed alongside other spring delights, arranged in neatly tied bunches at $1 apiece. Tie them around the roots and again around the tops, to keep the plants from curving due to their attempts to grow while in storage. Unlike other onions, scallions never form a large, rounded bulb, and may be direct seeded in succession all season long, though quality is highest in cooler weather. Like other members of the huge onion clan, scallions need rich soil and the absence of weeds to yield well. Harvest them when the largest leaves are about the diameter of a pencil.

Spinach

As a salad green, young, tender spinach lends its buttery goodness to mixes, or stands on its own. Blanched or steamed, spinach not only provides an abundance of minerals and vitamins but also adds a subtle, elegant flavor to savory dishes from quiche to quesadillas. Related to beets, spinach can be direct seeded as early in spring as the soil can be worked. It tolerates frost well, and matures a crop in about two months from sowing. It will produce about a half pound per square foot. For the finest quality, thin spinach to a spacing of three inches each way when the plants are about four inches tall. The plants removed by thinning can be sold as baby spinach. Wash them, spin dry, and present them in plastic bags holding about four ounces. Mature spinach should be pulled up, roots and all, washed free of soil, spun dry, and sold in bunches tied with raffia. This preserves the quality longer. The stems are eaten as a vegetable, separately from the luscious leaves, in some cuisines. Popeye was right about the nutrition packed into spinach. All those minerals come from the soil, of course, indicating that spinach needs high fertility in order to yield a good crop.

Squashes

Squashes come in two basic types, summer and winter. The former bear earlier, have thin skins, and don’t keep very well, while the latter mature late, have thick skins, and keep for months. Both types need plenty of space and have numerous insect enemies, but they bear heavily on sturdy plants that do not require trellising. Look for “bush” varieties intended to maximize space utilization. All squash types are heavy feeders. Further, they should not be allowed to dry out to the point of wilting the leaves. Thus, they demand a lot in return for their bounteous harvest.

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