Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Edible Buds

For a vegetable gardener, a flowering plant usually means an ending is nigh. The vegetable "bolts," then goes to seed and is no longer edible. Or at least not edible in the usual way. Our genius farmer friend Brett Grohsgal, being ever so resourceful as a farmer must, harvests the flowers from his bolting plants and sends them along in our weekly subscription packages.

Here you see the yellow flowers of the napini plant. Napini, like its cousin rapini, is a member of the brassica family, which includes cabbage, kale, collards, mustard and so forth. A distinguishing feature of these vegetables is the four-petaled flower they bear. It's usually yellow. But on the right in this picture are arugula flowers. They are white. All are edible. I add them to a salad and they give it the same peppery zest as the parent vegetables from which they bloom.

1 comment:

Sara said...

Dear Ed,
I'm sorry, I was not able to find an email address for you, so I'm using the comments.

Thanks for the visit and comment!
I've been reading some of your writing and discovered we have several points of common interest.
I've been working on a documentary about victory gardens and urban gardening called From the Ground Up. http://www.fromthegroundupmovie.com/

Just wanted to say hi and I look forward to reading more of your writing.

Best,
Sara