THE GARDEN MAGAZINE 



223 



prepare and eat them seemed a mystery, 

 until a Frenchman told me "just like aspara- 

 gus." The plant is ruined after it forms 

 a chard, so that new buds must be made for 

 this purpose each year. The globe or bud 

 is cooked by being tied up and dropped into 

 a kettle of boiling salted water. 



Kale is one of the several cousins of the 

 cabbage, cultivated in about the same way. 

 It is a cabbage without a head. The plants 

 are very beautiful, especially those with a 

 purple tinge in the stem and midrib. For 

 cooking the leaves are gathered and placed 

 in a tightly covered kettle to draw the juices 

 out; then boiled until tender, and served 

 with vinegar. The flavor is very much the 

 same as cabbage, though the texture is slightly 

 smoother. It is an excellent vegetable for 

 winter use, and is good to rely upon when 

 everything is frozen. For spring use the seed 

 should be sown in September, one inch deep, 



transplanted one foot apart, and protected 

 slightly during the winter. I sowed seeds of 

 Siberian kale toward the end of April, and 

 had plants large enough to be cooked early 

 in July. There are seven or eight varieties 

 of biennial kale offered by the seedsmen, 

 besides sea kale, which is a perennial, though 

 its leaves show deep dejection after the first 

 hard frost. The striped and variegated kind 

 is one raised for its beauty as a garnish only. 

 Out of the one package of seed thus named 

 came four distinct types of plant. Sow the 

 seed in April; when good and sturdy trans- 

 plant to a permanent residence along the 

 fence, make a path border of them or place 

 them one foot apart in an out-of-the-way 

 corner, where the young leaves may be 

 gathered for a garnish, and will also make a 

 beauty spot throughout the season. 



SWISS CHARD AND ORNAMENTAL BEETS 



A distinct variety of beet of which the leaves 

 are eaten as a boiled green is called Swiss 



'' 



290. After boiling, Ihe scales of (he globe arti- 

 choke are pulled off and Ihe fleshy bases eaten. Worth 

 a place in the garden for its beauty alone 



chard, though some people use the leaves of 

 the red table beet in the same way, and both 

 are extremely popular in the country. Sow 

 in early spring. When the plants are well up 

 they may be thinned from time to time and 

 the thinnings boiled in the same manner as 

 kale, or set out in the garden, for they trans- 

 plant well. The plants left to mature, which 

 they do in the late summer and autumn, 

 should stand about ten inches apart. The 

 leaf is beautiful and broad, pale green, with a 

 thick, white midrib. There is no fleshy root 

 as in the case of other beets. 



289. Pe-lsai, a Japanese visitor, which is an excellent substitute for lettuce in the hot weather. Crisp, tender, 

 with a fleeting sense of radish flavor, but no bite. Flowering plant to left, matured head to right 



One interesting thing about these little- 

 known vegetables is their distinctly beautiful 

 appearance; so many of them are equally 

 valuable for ornamental purposes that it may 

 count in part for their not being so often 

 grown for cooking. The fennel has very 

 finely cut foliage, which makes it useful for 

 combining with flowers for indoor decoration. 

 They remind one of the cosmos. The flavor 

 is very pungent, it is used as an herb rather 

 than a vegetable, and is worth an odd corner 

 in the garden. The list of little-known herbs 

 might be extended enormously, but that is 

 quite another story. 



Cardoon is handsome and luxuriant, and 

 is one of the most beautiful plants in our gar- 

 den. I can discover little about its culinary 

 purposes. The seed catalogue directs to 

 bind the leaves, blanch the stalks, cut out the 

 midrib, and serve as a salad. But alone 

 it is extremely bitter, a pleasing bitter, and a 

 splendid appetizer, but not suited to the 

 average American taste, though a little of 

 it makes a good addition to another salad, 

 such as lettuce and celery or lettuce and 

 tomatoes. It can be cooked and served 

 like asparagus. One seedsman says: Sow 

 the seed in the early spring, thin to one 

 foot, and blanch when full grown. Another 

 says: Sow in April one inch deep, and when 

 one year old transplant into trenches of well- 

 manured ground, three feet apart, setting the 

 plants one foot apart. The roots remain 

 from year to year. I have had great success 

 with ours. Both methods of culture were 

 tried and transplanting gave by far the better 



