A Warm Summer Welcome to Immigrants!!

U.S. home gardening would be a pretty monotonous place without the immigrants we love.  Evening Garden Club members grow and enjoy some interesting ones!  A member of Chinese descent grows boo choy and napa cabbage which her grandmother used in stir fries.  

Another has a garden full of unusual fruits she knows from the Russian Far East, including black, red and white currants, honeyberries, Korean cherries and this gorgeous Schisandra chinensis or Five- Flavor Berry-- a deciduous woody vine, native to forests of northern China and the Russian Far East.  (It’s available locally at One Green World Nursery.) 

Yours truly grows delectable Tromboncini, a squash which can be enjoyed young as summer squash (firmer textured than zucchini, with a hint of artichoke) or hardened off for a winter keeper. The vines are rampant, growing to 8 ft., but can go on a trellis.

Experimenting with vegetables met on trips to China, another member grows Kailaan, and Choy Sum, both kohl family flowering vegetables like broccoli, where all parts are edible.  She also likes Kobocha - a Japanese winter squash, and long beans, such as Dragon Bean (available from SeedSavers.com) which keep producing vine in the heat.

Speaking of  HEAT…

Many of us need ideas for spinach substitutes which will not bolt. Niki Jabbour, who gardens, cooks and writes about both, has a new book out called Veggie Garden Remix.  She was inspired by her Lebanese mother-in-law (an immigrant to the U.S.) to grow ingredients for Lebanese cooking.  Among them was one of several heat tolerant spinach substitutes, Molokhia,Corchorus olitorius, a Middle Eastern super green.  That led her to investigate over 124 mostly foreign vegetables for our gardens.

Other spinach substitutes in her book include: Magentaspreen Chenopodium gigantium, a quinoa relative, and Orach, Atriplex hortensis (both available from www.wildgardenseed.com – an Oregon organic grower), Red Leaf Vegetable Amaranth(known as Callaloo in the Caribbean) and New Zealand Spinach,Tetragonia.

The book is full of dozens of those wonderful garden immigrants which remind us so vividly of the rich cultural diversity around us.  Niki Jabbour was recently interviewed (June 4) on a terrific gardening podcast called A Way to Garden with Margaret Roach.  Check out the podcast and all of her garden-related writing and speaking at www.awaytogarden.com.  Watering is a lot more fun with a podcast to keep you company.

From the Corvallis Evening Garden Club–Meetings: 1^stMonday Oct-May, 7 p.m., 

Shepherd of the Valley Lutheran Church, 2650 NW Highland Dr. Corvallis.

 Tours, Holiday Greens Party, Socials.  More at www.Corvalliseveninggardenclub