". . . in a supermarket culture…the plant stages constantly present themselves in random order.
"To recover an intuitive sense of what will be in season throughout the year, picture a season of foods unfolding as if from one single plant. Take a minute to study this creation – an imaginary plant that bears over the course of one growing season a cornucopia of all the different vegetable products we can harvest. We’ll call it a vegetannual. Picture its life passing before your eyes alike a time-lapse film: first, in the cool early spring, shoots poke up out of the ground. Small leaves appear, then bigger leaves. As the plant grows up into the sunshine and the days grow longer, flower buds will appear, followed by small green fruits. Under midsummer’s warm sun, the fruits grow larger, riper and more colorful. As days shorten into the autumn, these mature into hard-shelled fruits with appreciable seeds inside. Finally, as the days grow cool, the vegetannual may hoard the sugars its leaves have made, pulling them down into a storage unit of some kind: a tuber, bulb or root.
“So goes the year. First the leaves: spinach, kale, lettuce and chard. Then more mature heads of leaves and flower heads: cabbage, romaine, broccoli, and cauliflower. The tender yourng fruit-set: snow peas, baby squash, cucumbers, followed by green beans, green peppers and small tomatoes. Then more mature, colorfull6y ripened fruets: beefsteak tomatoes, eggplants, red and yellow peppers. Then the large, hard-shelled fruits with developed seeds inside: cantaloupes, honeydews, watermelons, pumpkins, winter squash. Last come the root crops, and so ends the food parade. ….
“Some minor deviations and a bit of overlap are allowed, but in general, picturing an imaginary vegetannual plant is a pretty reliable guide to what will be in season, wherever you live.”
"To recover an intuitive sense of what will be in season throughout the year, picture a season of foods unfolding as if from one single plant. Take a minute to study this creation – an imaginary plant that bears over the course of one growing season a cornucopia of all the different vegetable products we can harvest. We’ll call it a vegetannual. Picture its life passing before your eyes alike a time-lapse film: first, in the cool early spring, shoots poke up out of the ground. Small leaves appear, then bigger leaves. As the plant grows up into the sunshine and the days grow longer, flower buds will appear, followed by small green fruits. Under midsummer’s warm sun, the fruits grow larger, riper and more colorful. As days shorten into the autumn, these mature into hard-shelled fruits with appreciable seeds inside. Finally, as the days grow cool, the vegetannual may hoard the sugars its leaves have made, pulling them down into a storage unit of some kind: a tuber, bulb or root.
“So goes the year. First the leaves: spinach, kale, lettuce and chard. Then more mature heads of leaves and flower heads: cabbage, romaine, broccoli, and cauliflower. The tender yourng fruit-set: snow peas, baby squash, cucumbers, followed by green beans, green peppers and small tomatoes. Then more mature, colorfull6y ripened fruets: beefsteak tomatoes, eggplants, red and yellow peppers. Then the large, hard-shelled fruits with developed seeds inside: cantaloupes, honeydews, watermelons, pumpkins, winter squash. Last come the root crops, and so ends the food parade. ….
“Some minor deviations and a bit of overlap are allowed, but in general, picturing an imaginary vegetannual plant is a pretty reliable guide to what will be in season, wherever you live.”
1 comment:
Thanks for taking the time to share this. You'll have to post on how your garden is doing and any other tips. If your still interested, next time we talk I can update you on my meager attempts at gardening because I don't think they'll be blog worthy. It looks like your weekend was off to a nice start!
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