When it comes to food, I am very particular.

My mother often blames herself for this personality flaw. As her only child, she often indulged certain behavioral quirks that most parents would have punished. Until the sixth grade, I thought everyone’s mother diligently picked celery out of their Sloppy Joes.

When I started growing my own greens, store-bought lettuces instantly lost their appeal. Why eat a pre-packaged bag of baby spinach while nasturtiums and chard thrive in the back yard? Add some carrot tops, a handful of garden herbs, a ripe heirloom tomato and suddenly you’ve created a culinary masterpiece that would bring Iron Chef Morimoto to tears.

With frost advisories right around the corner, I needed another round of garden-fresh greens to get me through a long winter of wilted California imports. So, last weekend I decided to dig up the carrot bed and plant some cool season crops.

Let me tell you, harvesting carrots was the easy part. Finding seeds in the Twin Cities metro area became quite a challenge.

The garden centers I’ve come to know like the back of my hand are now unrecognizable. Disorientated and confused, I wandered through rows and rows of brightly colored mums and dwarf evergreens. Why was all the mulch and black dirt on clearance? Why was the display of seeds and gardening gloves replaced by a display of ceramic scarecrows and jack-o-lanterns?

All around town, nurseries and garden centers were preparing for fall. Weeks ago, the big guys like Bachmann’s and Home Depot sent leftover seed stock back to their vendors. After a few phone calls, I discovered some smaller independents like Lyndale Garden Center and Minnehaha Falls Nursery still had seed but a rather limited selection. I really wanted to plant more spinach, but settled for some arugula and kale seed from Mother Earth Gardens.

Some greens I didn’t recognize, but I decided to plant them anyway. What does broccoli rapini and mustard mizuna taste like? I’ll let you know in 35 - 40 days.

(Note: If you’re interested in fall greens but not a wild goose chase, try ordering organic seed online at Seed Savers or Seeds of Change.)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 30th, 2005 at 1:02 pm and is filed under Greens + Lettuces. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.