By Carol Stocker, Globe Staff | April 7, 2005
You can travel in your backyard by planting an international cook's garden. Many Asian, South American, and African vegetables and herbs are no more difficult to grow than commonly available vegetables.
Some are cross cultural, such as cilantro, which is used in Latin, Indian, Chinese, and Middle Eastern cooking. Elvira Monsalve of Chile grows it year-round in her West Roxbury home. ''It's nice and beautiful for a few weeks, and then it dies, so I start it every two weeks, taking the seeds from the plants and saving them."
Many ethnic plants such as cilantro have already crossed over into the mainstream. ''Chili peppers and the so-called yard-long Chinese green beans (or asparagus beans) are in supermarkets now and chayote squash is sold at organic supermarkets," noted Jeremy Dick, community garden services manager for the Boston Natural Areas Network.
Four percent of the state's population is Asian and there's a lot of very intriguing Asian produce at supermarkets now, but much of it is still home grown. Jeremy Liu of the Asian Community Development Corporation calls the Berkeley Street Community Garden ''the most authentic and vibrant expression of Asian culture anywhere in Boston. The elderly can get physical and mental exercise and talk with their neighbors and preserve the culture. The amount of stuff they grow is amazing. I've seen winter melons weighing 50 pounds that you can cut open and use for soups and it will last all winter."
Another Asian favorite is bitter melon. A group of artists and community activists are currently organizing a Bitter Melon Week and signing up South End restaurants to feature this on their menus at the end of July (visit siftingtheinnerbelt.com for more on the project).
Jilo (Solanum gilo) is another cross-cultural vegetable, savored in parts of Brazil, where it was brought with the slave trade, and in its native West Africa, where it is known as ''garden eggs." This is one of the vegetables grown by local immigrants from Ghana, Liberia, Kenya, Zimbabwe, and Cameroons who are forming production cooperatives with help from the New Entry Sustainable Farming Project with the Tufts University's Friedman School of Nutrition, Science and Policy, teaming with Community Teamwork Inc. in Lowell.
The Worcester African Cooperative Group and the Lowell-based New England African Farmers Cooperative will be selling West African vegetables this summer at farmer's markets in Worcester, Lowell, and East Boston.
''There are 18 countries in Latin America where Spanish is the official language, but there can be strong differences in what they want to grow. For instance, Puerto Ricans don't like hot peppers. They grow sweet peppers," said Frank Mangan, an extension assistant professor in the UMass department of plants, soil & insect sciences who works with farmers growing crops popular with immigrant populations. (Visit worldcrops.org for more information.)
One group he works with is Nuestras Raices (''Our Roots"), a nonprofit in Holyoke that grows Puerto Rican vegetable seedlings and produce that involves 95 families in eight community gardens. Jaimie Iglesias is one of the founders. ''We do the real plants from Puerto Rico that my relatives and friends send seeds for, and we sell the plants and produce to our gardeners, to the neighbors, and to people from different towns such as Springfield and Chicopee."
Not all ethnic seeds are commercially available because of a long tradition of taking the seeds from the ripe vegetables themselves, which breed true (if they haven't cross pollinated). You can do the same by purchasing ripe vegetables from ethnic markets and using their seeds.
© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
Comments