Italian Vegetable Garden. Rosalind Creasy

My taxi driver in Rome was sure it was a mistake and sent me back into the hotel to have someone translate the note I had handed him. It was six o’clock in the morning, and my note said, in Italian, “Please take me to the Rome produce market.” Once there, I understood immediately why the driver thought I had made a mistake. The place was alive with people, occasional verbal abuse was being exchanged, purveyors pushed dollies and jockeyed for position, and utter chaos reigned. I was a little on edge, but after one glimpse at the stacks of spectacular and unfamiliar vegetables everywhere in sight, I relaxed. I had dedicated more than ten years to edible plants, and it was exciting to see some I didn’t know. And now I’d find out why vegetables and fruits I’d been eating in restaurants throughout Italy had been so outstanding.

Baby artichokes, romanesco type broccolis, and ruby heads of radicchios (right) are domesticated versions of plants that have been used in Italy since ancient times. Another such plant, the Judas tree or European red bud (Cercis siliquastrum), shown here, blooms in spring, and the magenta blossoms are enjoyed raw in Italy in salads or pickled in vinegar.

I was intimidated at first by all the shouting, but within minutes the passion both vendors and buyers showed for the produce put me at ease. Besides, how can a food lover be cool in front of a waist-high pile of purple artichokes? The men beamed at my continued delight as I wandered through the stalls and exclaimed over sculptured chartreuse broccoli, purple cauliflower, and stalks of miniature fava bean plants covered with pink flowers. “Do you eat the leaves and the flowers?” I tried to ask, eliciting shrugs and loud laughter. I wondered about the contorted stems of what looked like celery (the chicory ‘Catalogna Puntarella,’ I found out later) and marveled over bright magenta spheres. “Radicchio!” the vendor cried. We all exchanged fabulous gestures as I tried to put English words to vegetables and varieties I’d never seen before.

Prior to my first trip to Italy almost thirty-five years ago, Italian vegetables had meant mostly zucchini and tomatoes to me. The herbs were garlic and basil, and Italian cuisine was primarily pizza and spaghetti. Now I know that while these items are Italian, they make up only a small part of the cuisine—mostly from southern Italy. I learned about marinated vegetables—bright red peppers and sweet onions with fennel, all bathed in olive oil and herbs. I came to love deep-fried cardoon (a close relative of the artichoke) and to savor slices of sweet cantaloupe wrapped with prosciutto, as well as bagna cauda, a vast range of raw vegetables dipped in cream and olive oil flavored with anchovies and garlic. I consumed loads of pesto and memorable salads made with endive, tangy arugula, and radicchio. And the pasta! I sampled sauces far more imaginative than our nearly mandatory tomato sauce. In Italy pasta is made in a wide variety of shapes and might be served with a cream sauce and crowned with fresh baby peas or string beans. What revelations! What bliss!

I returned from Italy filled with enthusiasm and, already missing the food, determined to track down the vegetables and herbs I had seen and to learn how to cook them. I visited Italian markets, perused specialty seed catalogs, and interviewed Italian gardeners. The latter two sources yielded the most information. A love of gardening is part of the Italian heritage, which, together with frustration at the limited selection and quality of supermarket vegetables, had inspired many of the Italian Americans I met to plant extensive gardens filled with unusual vegetables. Many of the owners of the specialty seed companies similarly started their businesses out of a frustration with the limited availability of varieties of European seeds in the United States. They had discovered the Italian vegetables and were as excited about them as I was.

No wonder Americans, using supermarket produce that often tastes like the cardboard it’s packaged in, simply can’t duplicate the “taste of Italy.” Americans might have recently discovered balsamic vinegar and fresh mozzarella, and some American gourmets are spending eight dollars a pound on radicchio, but many Italian specialties such as cardoon, the spicy rustic arugula, leaf chicories, broccoli raab, purple artichokes that can be eaten raw, the melting yellow romano beans, and the mellow mint nepitella are still not available. It looks as though anyone who wants to experience the rich spectrum of tastes of true Italian cooking is still going to have to plant a garden!

Like in much of Europe, small farmers’ markets are very popular in Italy. The number and quality of similar markets in the United States is growing quickly, and they are great places for gardeners to learn more about vegetable varieties that grow well in their climates.

A woman strings cherry tomatoes in preparation for drying. Drying is the most common use for cherry tomatoes in Italy, and it is most associated with the hot, arid, areas in the south.

How to Grow an Italian Garden

The majority of vegetables and herbs planted in an Italian vegetable garden, and the methods for growing them, are very similar to the crops and methods used in most gardens. In Italy small plots of ground are cultivated near the home, and individual vegetables are most often grown in rows. Many of the vegetables are comfortably familiar to us, namely, tomatoes, beans, zucchini, cucumbers, eggplant, broccoli, lettuce, and peppers. In fact, sometimes they grow the identical variety.

But as a rule, Italians grow slightly different varieties of our favorite vegetables. The Italian tomato varieties are most often paste types, the sweet peppers are frequently long and thin rather than short and blocky, the green beans are often flat romano types or

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