Edible Asian Garden. Rosalind Creasy
Ridged
Peppers: ‘Cayenne,’ ‘Hot Asian,’ ‘Santaka’
Shisho: Green leaf
Shisho: Red leaf
Soybeans: ‘Maple Leaf
Yard-long beans: ‘Red Seeded,’ ‘White Seeded’
Winter squash: ‘Autumn Cup’
the Cunningham garden
David Cunningham lives in Vermont on a beautiful farm that sits on a knoll with a breathtaking view of the countryside.
David grew up there, and I couldn’t help thinking that he was clearly destined to go into horticulture. We sat down to plan the Asian garden together as soon as I arrived. Though I didn’t pay much attention to the information at the time, David mentioned that his mother was a wolf preservationist—and that the garden was encircled by a wolf yard, then surrounded by a field of sheep.
I returned in midsummer to see the garden, and at that time the wolves were much more in evidence. In fact, to visit the garden we had to exchange places with them; the two wolves went into the house while we went to the garden. Though the idea of being in close proximity to them unnerved me a bit, the wolves were actually quite lovable and shy.
In the garden, which is protected by an electric fence to keep out the wolves, David’s horticultural skills were abundantly manifest. The soil was beautiful—crumbly and dark—and obviously well cared for, and row upon row of healthy Asian vegetables attested to its quality. David told me that long ago the soil had been clay based but that in the early 1950s it started receiving care as a vegetable garden. In winter, the area is planted with winter rye, which in spring is grazed by sheep, and over the years the soil has been amended with mulches and compost. A few years earlier, David had incorporated twenty-five bales of peat moss into the plot. Always careful about keeping the soil healthy, the Cunninghams have kept planks on the paths to avoid packing down the soil because they plan to use it for beds in the future.
The overall vegetable garden is about thirty by forty feet in size, and David had planted a little less than half with Asian vegetables. We started reviewing the garden at the north end, which was planted with three varieties of edible-podded peas: ‘Dwarf Gray Sugar,’ ‘Mammoth Melting,’ and ‘Oregon Sugar Pod.’ “If I had to pick a favorite,’’ David told me, “I think it would be ‘Dwarf Gray Sugar,’ because it’s such a vigorous grower. It has reddish-purple flowers and the pods are very tasty. At one point, I thought I was going to lose all the peas, because we had a week of temperatures topping 90. All the varieties looked pretty sad for a while, but they perked right up again after it cooled down.”
David went on to describe the six varieties of cabbage-type greens he had planted in the next few rows. ‘Pac Choy’ has white stems, an open form, and doesn’t make heads. ‘Tyfon,’ a cross between Chinese cabbage and turnips, has a mild mustardlike flavor that, according to David, is good in salads. ‘Spring A-1’ is a cabbage with a medium-tight head and ‘WR 90’ an upright cabbage with a very tight head. ‘Winter Queen’ is a cabbage good for fall harvest, and ‘Tat Tsai’ is a dark green nonheading plant with spoon-shaped leaves growing out of its base.
In the next rows, David had planted the Japanese herb mitsuba, an aromatic parsleylike herb, and ‘Green Lance,’ a Chinese type of broccoli that David likes using in stir-fries. The head of this broccoli is open and the plant’s stem is mainly what is eaten. He had also planted two types of mustard: ‘Red Giant,’ a striking, somewhat spicy vegetable, and ‘Savanna’ mustard spinach, a mild-flavored green. The variety of daikon in the garden was ‘April Cross.’ David described it as very tender and uniform with no pith, woodiness, or hollowness. “When you start eating it,” he said, “it doesn’t seem hot, but it builds up. We eat it in stir-fries, but we’ve had it raw in salads to and are really happy with it.”
David Cunningham harvests cabbage from his Asian garden.
David was about to start his fall garden during my visit and was so pleased with the summer’s experiment that he wanted to try more varieties of the cabbages. This time he was planning to plant ‘Green Rocket,’ ‘Tsoi Sim,’ and ‘Taisai’ plus shungiku greens and a mustard spinach called ‘Osome.’
I asked David about pest problems, and he told me he had had flea beetles on some of the daikon plants and greens and an occasional problem with moles. He remarked that at one time the family had had problems with occasional rabbits, deer, and woodchucks and a serious struggle with raccoons whenever corn was growing. “But,” he added, in what I considered a masterful understatement, “since the wolves have been here, things have settled down a bit.’’
I left this Vermont pastoral scene with my concern about the adaptability of at least some Asian plants put to rest. Many of these wonderful vegetables could be well adapted to a non-Asian kitchen, and David was obviously enjoying both growing and cooking with them. In fact, as far as I was concerned, a fair number of these vegetables had passed the true cooking gardener’s test, as David was interested enough to try even more varieties the next season.
the encyclopedia
of asian
vegetables
Asia encompasses diverse climates, from northern China to tropical Thailand, so it is not surprising that Asian vegetables and herbs are an extremely varied lot. For the sake of practicality, I have concentrated here on the vegetables and herbs especially identified with the cuisines of Asia. The majority of species covered are Chinese, Japanese, and Southeast Asian, but I certainly could not discuss Asia without mentioning vegetable favorites from India, Korea, and the Philippines.
Japanese cooks long for mitsuba and green daikon. Thai gardeners, to have a taste of home, must cultivate their own coriander for its roots. Chinese cooks seek out blanched Asian chives, Shanghai flat cabbage, and an amaranth called Chinese spinach. To enjoy these vegetables and herbs, they usually need to grow their own.
An Asian harvest includes: ‘Japanese Giant Red’ mustard, ‘Joi Choi,’ tatsoi, mibuna, leek flowers, and snow and ‘Sugar Snap’ peas.
Owing to space limitations, numerous vegetables such as celtuce, taro, and cucuzzi (a type of squash) are not covered here but are well worth exploring, as are other seasonings such as turmeric, galangal, and many Japanese herbs, which are not reliably available commercially as plants.
The format of the entries calls for a few words of explanation. Each vegetable is listed under its most common English name, followed by alternate common names in parentheses, the Latin name, and the Asian name(s), where pertinent. Regarding the spelling of Chinese names there is great confusion, primarily because the English words are transliterated from Chinese characters. The result is a diversity of spellings approximating the original sounds. Pac choi, for example, might also be spelled pak choy, bok choy, bok choi, and baak choi. I have chosen to use the North American spellings.
A number of seed companies carry Asian varieties of vegetables and herbs; these are listed on page 102. The largest offerings are available from Evergreen Y. H. Enterprises and Kitazawa Seed Company, which specialize in Asian vegetables.
AMARANTH
(CHINESE SPINACH; LEAF AMARANTH) AMARANTHUS TRICOLOR
(A. gangeticus, A. mangostanus)
Hindi: chaulai; Mandarin: xian cai; Cantonese: yin choi; Japanese: hi-yu-na
‘Merah’ amaranth