Dancinwaters, I assume it is nutritious but can't quote you any nutritional facts about it. You pretty much prepare salsify the same way you prepare carrots. You wash and scrub it with a veggie brush, peel it with a carrot peeler, and cut it into slices about 1/8" to 1/4" thick. You can cook it by boiling it in lightly salted water for about 10 or 15 minutes and then season it with butter or salt or your favorite herbs. Salsify is said to have a sort of oyster flavor to it, but I haven't found that to be uniformly true. Sometimes the oyster taste is more strongly apparent and other times it isn't. Here's a couple of recipes and if I find more, I'll come back and add them: SCALLOPED SALSIFY 14 saltine crackers (or Ritz crackers), crushed 1 lb. salsify, peeled, sliced and boiled (approx. 2 cups) and well-drained 1/2 t. salt 1/4 t. paprika 1 T. butter or margarine 3/4 C. whipping cream or half-and-half 1 C. buttered breadcrumbs Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Spray the bottom and sides of a 1-quart casserole dish with a nonstick cooking spray. Place the crushed saltine crackers in the bottom of the dish. Layer the cooked, drained salsify on top of the cracker crumbs. Sprinkle salt and paprika evenly over the salsify. Dot the salsify with the butter or margarine. Pour the heavy cream or half-and-half over the salsify and top with the breadcrumbs. Bake at 400 degrees for 30 minutes. Serves 4-6. SALSIFY BISQUE 1 lb. salsify, peeled, sliced and boiled and well-drained (approx. 2 cups) 1/4 C. chopped celery 2 T. chopped onion 1 t. salt 1/8 t. red pepper 3 C. half-and-half 2 egg yolks, beaten chopped fresh parsley for garnish Combine salsify with the chopped onion and celery and process in a food processor or blender until pureed. Place the salsify/celery/onion mixture in the top of a double boiler. Add salt, pepper and half-and-half and stir well to combine. Place top of double boiler over the bottom water-filled lower portion of double boiler and bring to a simmer. Simmer for about 6 to 8 minutes, or until mixture is thoroughly heated. Remove top of double boiler from the heat and set on an unheated portion of the stovetop. Slowly and gradually, pour about 1/4 of the mixture into a heat-proof bowl containing the beaten egg yolks. Mix well and then stir the egg mixture back into the top portion of the double boiler and stir well. Place top pan back onto the bottom part of the double boiler and cook over gently simmering, but not boiling, water. Cook, stirring regularly, until soup thickens. Once thickened, remove from heat, pour into bowls and garnish with finely chopped parsley. You also can pickle salsify, but I don't know if the very old recipe I have is still considered 'safe' since so many old recipes no longer are approved by the NHCFP, so won't post it here. Dawn

Dale I guess I missed the thread where you said you'd post a couple of recipes. That can very easily happen on this forum. Anyway, I was absolutely DELIGHTED when I saw this post today!! Thank you, thank you, thank you! These recipes sound soooo good. I can hardly wait til my salsify is big enough to start harvesting. You wouldn't believe how I fuss over that bed of salsify. I pick out every tiny little weed that tries to sneak in and compete with it for space, and since it's in a raised bed that dries out fairly quickly I'm out there keeping it watered, (as per growing instructions)on a daily basis, no matter what's on my agenda otherwise. No, it won't take up much space, but does require deep loose soil, even poor soil. That's why I have mine in the raised bed,because the roots grow so long. If you've never personally grown it before, the seeds are like sticks, and rather large at that. They're very easy to plant, and get up and growing. You'll just have to keep the bed wet, and when they first come up, they look sort of like grass stalks, but you'll recognize them. They do seem to be rather slow growing, and don't just start shooting up as do some plants. Mine seem like their taking forever, just to get to the point where I can mulch them. I may have planted them at the wrong time, but whatever, I'll do better next go-round, lol! I'll just bet they'll take off and do really well this fall. And, no-there is no one in this neck of the woods who grow salsify. But they probably should, huh? Thanks again and again for the awesome tips and wonderful recipes :) Barbara

Y'all, I hate the heat and it has slowed down the fall garden a lot for sure. I am just so ready to be able to go outside in cooler weather and spend the whole day out there if I want to. The stuff I still have in seed packets in the house isn't going to grow until it is planted, is it? It isn't going to get planted until the soil cools. Our high temps this week have ranged from 101 to 106 and our heat index has been even worse, so the soil sure hasn't cooled down a lot yet and I have only gone outside for very limited times in early morning and in the evening. Hopefully the cold front that should make it this far south late this evening or early tomorrow will give us enough of a cool-down that the soil temps will drop some more and quickly at that. Larry, I have big plans for the fall garden, and even to me, my own list seems too ambitious if I look at it all at once. Luckily, it doesn't all go into the ground all at once or I'd never manage to get it done on time. Due to the nature of the plants, some were planted many weeks ago and some aren't planted yet. I can manage a big garden in lots of small spurts of activity, squeezed into whatever cool hours we have. Lately I just wave at my plants as I walk down to the mail box and back, and I promise I'll stop in and see them when it cools down. All along I intended to keep whatever summer plants were still producing (except for most of the tomato plants since I had so many) and whatever had survived the grasshoppers and blister beetles and I intended for sure to plant October beans, southern peas, summer squash and broccoli. Everything else was "iffy" depending on if it ever rained again. I ordered the seeds, though, so certainly hoped I could use them this fall instead of next spring. Being this far south and often having high temps in the 100s occasionally through the end of September, I never get to put greens in the ground very early so normally the fall garden gets planted in July/August for the warm season stuff and then late August/early September for the cool-season stuff, and often I don't get the fall greens into the ground until early October. So far, that's about the same planting track I am on right now, except I'd hoped all summer for an early cool-down so I could be ahead of my own planting schedule for once. That didn't happen. For whatever reason, the grasshoppers are still munching away on the plants that remain from spring and summer, and especially on the tomato plants (the blister beetles are helping them eat tomato plants) but haven't touched the fall plantings of southern peas and green beans. That sort of adds to my feeling that insects are more prone to attack stressed plants and leave healthier plants alone. It isn't that the heat isn't stressing the beans and southern peas, but just that they are younger, healthier and better able to handle the stress. I did keep row covers on them for a while, but the row covers have been off the southern peas for a couple of weeks now and off the green beans beginning about 3 or 4 days ago. So far, nothing has nibbled on them. The 3+" of rain that fell a couple of weeks ago saved my fall garden plans. For a while there, after I planted the southern peas and green beans, I thought that might be all I'd do for fall. Then the rain came along and perked up both the garden and the gardener, and I added fall cukes and squash, and started seeds in cups of a lot of the cool season stuff that can be grown from transplants, like the kale and lettuce. Now I'm just waiting for the weather to become more cooperative. With cooler temps, I hope to get the root crops seedied into the beds in the next few days, and I do mean "few" because our VFD's annual fundraiser is next week so I'll be spending some time on that as well. I have to wait until the soil temps drop low enough for good germination though, so you can bet I'll be out with the thermometer checking the soil temps daily. Carol, After that 3" of rain fell, our heat index just soared. I would use our own readings from our thermometers and barometer and plug them into the HPC's online Heat Index Calculator. For a few days we had a heat index between 112-116 but it has been lower the last couple of days as the insane heat has sucked up some of that moisture from the ground. I hope you get more rain and if it will cooperate and fall in lower temps then maybe your heat index won't get so high. Kim, I haven't planted salsify this late in years, but since our overall weather pattern is hotter than it used to be, I think it has a good chance. Last winter was so hot that the only really cold spell I remember was the first week in December when it was very cold for the downtown Marietta Christmas parade. We thought that was the beginning of winter, but looking back, that was just about the beginning and the end of winter weather all in the same week. Of course, since I am planting salsify and counting on fairly warm ground through at least the end of December, we'll probably have an early winter and a long, cold one just to make me crazy. That's okay. If fall salsify doesn't work, I'll plant it again in spring. Most of the more ususual seeds I get, I cannot find locally and I order them so I can have the specific varieties I want to grow. All you really can find in the stores here is the same-old-same-old hybrids with a few heirlooms and open-pollinated varieties, and I don't necessarily want to grow the standard varieties. I like a lot of the open-pollinated and heirloom varieties bred with flavor in mind rather than earliness or uniformity or shelf life. With a lot of my fall plantings, I had seeds left from summer, but for the Wild Garden seed mixes and some of the kale and root crops, I ordered from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange and Bountiful Gardens. The "Wild Garden" mixes are not actually wild plants, they are just mixes of anything/everything from the breeding program at Wild Garden Farms. A few things I choose are season-specific. For example, for Spinach I choose some varieties that do better in fall and winter than in spring. In spring, we often go from 'too cold' to 'too hot' in about two days and sometimes spinach doesn't get to gtow for very long before the heat sets in, so I choose varieties that make smaller plants that mature faster. With a long, mild autumn I can grow some varieties of spinach that get larger, but which also have later DTMS and would likely be hit too hard by the spring heat. Sometimes it is a very subtle difference but it does matter. Winter Bloomsdale Spinach withstands cold and winter moisture a little differently than Bloomsdale Longstanding, which is why I choose it for fall, for example. Last year I planted a forage mixture for the deer and rabbits since there were so few native plants alive after the long hot summer and the wildlife was so starved, and it included turnips and collards that never froze all winter long, so this year I thought I'd plant more of them for us. It is not a bad wildfire year at my end of the state, and that is what determines how much of a fall garden I have most years. If the fires are bad in late summer and fall, I am too busy to plant a fall garden. Since the fires here haven't been too bad since late July, I have time for a fall garden. I just try to work with whatever the weather and real life allow me to do. Our "normal" wildfire season actually is in the winter months, but not much has been normal the last couple of yeas. Back in June and July when I was canning like a maniac, every day I hoped I could have just "one more day" without fires so I could get a bit more canning done. It used to be the fires only interfered with spring planting time, but lately they are a problem at different points year-round. Last summer, between the drought and the almost-daily wildfires I didn't can anything all summer long. This year, I canned day after day after day. I'm hoping for a quiet autumn, fire-wise, so I can work in the fall garden day after day in the same way. Ezzirah, I think it was wise to choose cool-season stuff. Now, if only the cool weather will arrive and cooperate with us. After suffering through these last two hot summers, I am determined to have a good fall garden. Having to hang out so much inside to avoid the heat all summer long for two summers has driven me crazy, because I'd much rather be in the garden. I've mostly dabbled in fall gardening in the past without getting overly serious about it, and a lot of that has been because of us being busy with fire department stuff in the fall, but there's been some major schedule changes to routine fall VFD fundraisers and community activities, so I ought to have more time free for the fall garden. Yay! I'd be remiss if I didn't add this last part for anyone considering a fall garden. Without a way to protect your plantings from wildlife, you have to share the plantings with them. Because I am surrounded by plentiful wildlife, my big garden has an 8' tall garden fence around it. Without that fence, I wouldn't even attempt a fall and winter garden because the wild animals would get it all. Even now, I have deer that come and nibble anything that I grow on the fence, but I don't mild sharing that little bit with them since they can't reach anything else, and they are hungry too. Dawn

Jennifer, I LOVE, lovelovelovelovelove Stouffers spinach souffle! I can make a whole meal out of just thatand eat the whole thing. Oh, my, its rich! But its SO good. When theyre on sale I buy a whole bunch of them, and I think the cashiers must think Im nuts sometimes! Something I used to make (invented, like most of the things I make) was kind of like a soufflebut not as collapsible. I beat up a bunch of eggs with a tiny bit of milk, poured some in a glass breadpan (to cover the bottom), put in a layer of cream cheese and cheddar cheese and topped that with spinach (frozen, squeezed dry), put in more egg, another layer of the cheeses and spinach, poured the last of the egg over the top and topped it with a nice layer of the cheddar. Then I baked itdont remember how hot or how longprobably about 300 and just until the cheese was brown and toasty on top. Yum! Hadnt thought about it in a long time. Might need to make it again. Bet it would work with wilted fresh spinach too. BTW, if youre gonna grow chard, you really should put in some spinach too. My friend who lives out there grows Bloomsdale Long Standing and says she has really good luck with it. And consider peas, lettuce, radishes, and kohlrabis, they should all work well for you. And I think maybe you could at least try beets and parsnips and carrots since they can be planted as soon as the ground can be worked and since they can stay in until its getting really cold again (I had freezing temps a few times before I finally got them covered with leaves). And they may not get as big as they would somewhere with a longer growing season, but theres no "lower limit" on size for eating the root crops, so however big they get is the size you eat them! And you should be able to grow other cole crops besides the kohlrabis, too. I dont grown any of them, partly because of space, but also because theyre so inclined to get aphids. Maybe that wouldnt be such a problem at a cooler higher altitude. Check out the last page of the chart Ive linked below for more info on planting times for veggies. Digit, I totally agree with you about radicchio! I dont quite understand why its considered edible! Tried red orach last year, and dont like that eitheror endive! Just dont like bitter! And Ive never even tried some of the less-than-usual veggies youre all talking about above, like salsify, chicory, sorrel, fennel. Actually I have a couple bronze fennels, but Im growing them for the feathery, bronzy ornamental valuenot to eat. (Tho I have one of them growing at the back of the tomato patch, and may be tempted to dig up a root from that one just to check it out!) And none of that was about SOUPso heres my soup connection! Bonnie, I made Ham Bone soup last weekso Id have something easy when Im coming and going over the holidaysyet something with "body!" I call it ham BONE soup, cause back right after I got married we were poor (not that Im rich now!) and when I made it, it was made with a bone with virtually no meat left on it! That was the only way we could afford it! Now when I have a ham I save the bonewith LOTS of meat, to make soup. And this time I made it with Anasazi beans. Much better than the great northern or navy beans I used to use. Thats the only way Ill make it from now on. Oh, and since you were talking about parsnips, when I made it I had just gone out to dig some carrots (for the soup), and while I had the leaves pulled back I dug some beets and parsnips too, so when I was making the soup I decided to put in a few parsnips too to see if it workedand theyre great in ham bone soup. They need to be the very last thing put in, because they cook very quickly. I just cut them up pretty small. Ill add more next time. When it comes to soup, I pretty much stick to the old standbys, chicken noodle, ham bone, and vegetable beef barley. And when I make them, the WAY I make themjust keep adding a "little" bit more of this and that and this and thatI usually wind up with TWO big soup pots full, and freeze most of it in 1-gallon plastic "sherbet" containers so I can get "a gallon" of it out whenever I dont have time for anything else or am just to brain dead to even try to think of something else to make. Its fast, and easy, and always there! And sometimes I make ones that are a little less common for melentil, potato, leek, and a few others. When I was looking up the leek recipes recently I found a parsnip soup recipe that I printed out to try sometimeif sometime ever comes! I have SO many recipes Im gonna have to have them buried with me so I can bring them back next time around! I dont collect cook books anymore! I had a whole bunch I sold at my garage sale before I moved to this house. I still use my 1962 Better Homes & Gardens looseleaf cookbook that I got right after I got out of high school! Its (needless to say) getting REALLY beat up by now, so I bought a new onebut I dont use it! I like the recipes in the old one better! When it comes to eating, I do believe in moderation, but whats the point of eating it/anything if it doesnt taste good! Besides that I still have thealso very beat up3 x 5 cards my mother wrote her recipes on for me that I use over and over and............ And besides that I just stick to the web! Its so easy to look up a whole bunch of recipes for the same thing, and then pick out the best ingredients from eachto create your own version of whatever it is youre making. Computers rock, Skybird P.S. Jennifer, Im glad to know I can become a vegetarian just by "switching" meats! That sure makes it easy! Here is a link that might be useful: Veggie Planting Guide - pdf