On Fri, 12 Dec 2003 14:39:27 -0000, "Andy Hunt"
wrote:

Forgleg wrote:

Radishes are shallow. Peas sound ideal. There are many short varieties
of carrots (I can never bring mine to maturity. I keep thinning and
eating tiny carrots 'til they're all gone.) Fresh greens are lovely to
have. Many loose-leaf lettuces can be harvested a few leaves at a
time. Some cabbag-y greens, too. 'Bush' type beans don't need to be
trellised and are rewarding.

Ah! I didn't realise you could get "bush" type beans . . . they sound like
an excellent idea. Just so long as they don't go declaring war on everything
else in the garden . . . ;-) . . . sorry best to keep politics out of
gardening, isn't it. Some things are sacred, after all.

With the help of a friend, I once put up an elaborate and sturdy frame
for growing 'pole' beans, and didn't read the packet when I planted
bush-type haricot vert at the base. Looked pretty dumb. Although the
beans were fine. It *is* unfortunate that 'bush' landed at the
beginning of a sentence and required a capital letter. No connection
implied.

Lettuces did occur to me, but when I think about it I can hear an army of
slugs and snails licking their chops in my mind . . . cabbages yes, but I
have to go careful with them, I was traumatised with cabbages as a child. A
bit of nice crisp white cabbage fried up with garlic, chilli and potatoes
with a dash of salt certainly warms a winter's evening, though.

Start training those mercenary mice. There aren't too many slugs
(well, even one is too many) in my area, so I can't say for sure, but
I didn't have a problem this summer with basil, sage, tomato, chile,
horseradish, & parsley in pots. They seem to like easy spaces where
they can slime from place to place, not a round-trip pot-climb every
day.

I even manage sprouts occasionally - cooked 'al dente' with butter and black
pepper. I think it's the sort of liquidised school-dinner sprouts that leave
the psychological scars.

I believe the US equivalent used to be cooked spinach. Just sitting
there in a gray-green wet mass. They've given up now. The only sign of
veg in school menus is "baby (lathed) carrots with dip' and an
occasional mention of 'steamed brocolli.' After all, a previous
administration declared that catsup was a vegetable...