Life with Liz: Time to plan for rainbow of vegetables

It’s the Wonderful Husband’s favorite time of the year: gardening season. I should say gardening preseason. He’s been poring over the seed catalogs with the same enthusiasm that G pores over the poultry catalog. I can see him dogearing pages in the actual catalogs, and I keep getting screenshots, asking what I think about this particular species of tomato or that particular species of carrot.

I’m partial to butter lettuce, red tomatoes and orange carrots. I prefer my sweet corn to be bicolor, and I like straight-up zucchini, yellow squash and cucumbers. The WH on the other hand, has planted every color of the rainbow when it comes to carrots, leafy greens that are “peppery,” “spicy” “distinctively nutty,” and when it comes to tomatoes, they come in even more colors than the carrots.

It’s an interesting dichotomy. My adventurous side in the kitchen relies on plain and simple ingredients used in new and exciting ways, whereas he would make the same salad every night, but have a different blend of crazy vegetables hidden in among the old standards. I support his habit of planting 15 different varieties of everything in the hopes that at least one of two of them will find the right balance of weather, soil and luck and thrive in our little patch. G refers to this method as “not putting all your eggs in one basket.”

It’s funny how much color affects the way I feel about fresh produce. Although I’ve tasted many a yellow tomato that tastes no different from a juicy, red one, I still can’t bring myself to eat a tomato and cheese sandwich with anything other than a red tomato. One year, I canned all the yellow tomatoes and pulled them out in the dead of winter to use as a base for a spaghetti sauce. It smelled delicious, but looked absolutely unappetizing as I scooped it out of the pot. That recipe did not get a single “make this again” from anyone.

I’m trying to decide if the kids are playing us or not, because right now their interest in everything we plan on putting into the ground is at an all-time high, especially G, whose aversion to vegetables is legendary. In the past, hands-on experience growing their own food has always resulted in kids who are more eager to try new things, so I’m encouraging this behavior as much as I can, even if it means throwing an extra pack or two of some exotic species of beet into the shopping cart.

I am holding firm on my mantra of “if you grow it, you must eat it,” and they all are agreeing enthusiastically. I think they’re forgetting the time I steamed the purple carrots and they ended up looking like something that had already passed through their digestive tract once already.

G has already given himself an escape route, though, declaring that any “extra” produce can be fed to his chickens. His maniacal little chuckle after that declaration is the reason I suspect that his interest in the garden may not be entirely sincere.

While I’m usually more than happy to let the WH plant whatever he wants, some of the stuff that he’s finding makes me question whether or not I need to be more involved in the process. The other night he suggested a “tasteless huckleberry that develops a rich taste when cooked in jams and pies.” What struck me as odd was that he shops exclusively in heirloom catalogs and tries to grow as many heirloom and rare seeds as he can. I couldn’t believe that this was an heirloom variety, since it sounded much more like something that was cooked up in a lab somewhere.

While he’s planning his vegetable garden, he’s also got his eye out for appealing flower species to plant along side the vegetables to help discourage critters from invading his garden. Marigolds are the most common pest deterrent, but apparently different species keep different pests away, so he will have them all planted next to his vegetable beds and around the house. This year, he’s trying to add an assortment of perennials to his flower beds around the house, mixing in a few annuals so he can change things up every year.

Of course, before we plant anything, we have to take into consideration the livestock, the puppy and the wildlife that browses around the house. The other night, the WH added a pretty flower to the basket and I questioned whether or not he really wanted to do that. He had selected a foxglove, and while it certainly is pretty, apparently the WH hasn’t read all the murder mystery books that I have, because if he had he would have recognized it as extremely toxic to both animals and people.

Through this whole process, I’m continually reminded of how the most beautiful things can be the most poisonous and how something that’s as frumpy as a good old-fashioned marigold can be so useful.

How easily swayed we are by promises of exotic lettuces that incorporate flavors from every corner of the earth, and just end up tasting like fancy grass.

How no matter how many varieties of tomato you have planted, at the end of the day, there is nothing like a sun-ripened, meaty Beefsteak tomato, sliced up and put on white bread with a slather of mayo and some Cooper sharp cheese.

Liz Pinkey is a contributing writer to the Times News. Her column appears weekly in our Saturday feature section.