Riverbend Gardens - Our Roots Run Deep

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Beets Wild forms of Beta vulgaris occur along the shores of the Mediterranean, extending eastwards as far as Indonesia, and westwards along the coasts of the Atlantic up to the Canary Islands and southern Norway. Beta vulgaris, grown for its leaves, was taken into cultivation in the eastern Mediterranean or the Middle East and is first mentioned in the literature in Mesopotamia in the 9th century BC.
Broccoli Roman references to a cabbage-family vegetable that may have been broccoli are less than perfectly clear: the Roman natural history writer, Pliny the Elder, wrote about a vegetable that fit the description of broccoli. Some vegetable scholars recognize broccoli in the cookbook of Apicius.
Brussels Sprouts During the sixteenth century they enjoyed a popularity in the southern Netherlands that eventually spread throughout Europe.[1] Cultivation exists in the United States including certain coastal areas of San Mateo, Santa Cruz and Monterey Counties of California.
Cabbage Broadly speaking, cabbage varieties come in two groups, early and late. The early varieties mature in about 45 days. They produce small heads which do not keep well and are intended for consumption while fresh. The late cabbage matures in about 87 days, and produces a larger head.
Carrot The wild ancestors of the carrot are likely to have come from Afghanistan, which remains the center of diversity of D. carota, the wild carrot, sometimes called Queen Anne's lace. Selective breeding over the centuries of a naturally-occurring subspecies of the wild carrot, Daucus carota subsp. sativus has produced the familiar garden vegetable.
Cauliflower The preferred garden soil for cauliflower is well drained, is moist, and has significant organic matter with a pH of 6 to 7. Cauliflower is typically started indoors six to eight weeks prior to setting out in the garden and is typically ready for harvest two months after transplanting. As with all brassicas, seeds germinate best with a soil temperature of 25±1 °C (77±2 °F). The vegetable requires a cool, moist climate - if temperatures go too high, the plants will not produce flower heads, if too low a temperature is reached, the plants might button, creating small heads. It is cold tolerant, but will not survive hard frosts. Of all the brassicas, cauliflowers have the largest number of growth requirements, and the ability to successfully grow cauliflower in a home garden is often thought to be the hallmark of well-managed soil and a good gardener.
Corn There are several theories about the specific origin of maize in Mesoamerica: 1. It is a direct domestication of a Mexican annual teosinte, Zea mays ssp. parviglumis, native to the Balsas River valley of southern Mexico, with up to 12% of its genetic material obtained from Zea mays ssp. mexicana through introgression; 2. It derives from hybridization between a small domesticated maize (a slightly changed form of a wild maize) and a teosinte of section Luxuriantes, either Z. luxurians or Z. diploperennis; 3. It underwent two or more domestications either of a wild maize or of a teosinte; 4. It evolved from a hybridization of Z. diploperennis by Tripsacum dactyloides. (The term "teosinte" describes all species and subspecies in the genus Zea, excluding Zea mays ssp. mays.) In the late 1930s, Paul Mangelsdorf suggested that domesticated maize was the result of a hybridization event between an unknown wild maize and a species of Tripsacum, a related genus. However, the proposed role of tripsacum (gama grass) in the origins of maize has been refuted by modern genetic analysis.
Cucumber The cucumber has been cultivated for at least 3,000 years in Western Asia, and was probably introduced to other parts of Europe by the Romans. Records of cucumber cultivation appear in France in the 9th Century, England in the 14th Century, and in North America by the mid-16th Century.
Dill Weed Dill originated in central Asia. Zohary and Hopf remark that "wild and weedy types of dill are widespread in the Mediterranean basin and in West Asia." Although several twigs of dill were found in the tomb of Amenhotep II, they report that the earliest archeological evidence for its cultivation comes from late Neolithic lake shore settlements in Switzerland.[1] Traces have been found in Roman ruins in Great Britain.
Green Beans Green beans are the unripe fruits of any kind of bean, including the yardlong bean, the hyacinth bean, the pea, the winged bean, the carper (vellum) bean, and especially the common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris), whose pods are also usually called string beans in the northeastern United States, but can also go by snap beans. Varieties have been bred especially for the fleshiness, flavor, or sweetness of their pods. Smaller bean pods are often referred to by the French name haricots verts.
Kale Until the end of the Middle Ages, kale was the common green vegetable in all of Europe. Curly leaved varieties of cabbage already existed along with flat leafed varieties in Greece, in the fourth century BC. These forms, which were referred to by the Romans as Sabellian kale, are considered to be the the ancestors of modern kales. Today, one may differentiate between varieties according to the low, intermediate or high length of the stem, with varying leaf types. The leaf colours range from light green through green, dark green and violet-green to violet-brown. Russian kale was introduced into Canada (and then into the U.S.) by Russian traders in the 19th century.
Kohlrabi Kohlrabi (Brassica oleracea Gongylodes Group) is a low, stout cultivar of the cabbage which has been selected for its swollen, nearly spherical, Sputnik-like shape. The name comes from the German Kohl ("cabbage") plus Rabi ("turnip"), because the swollen stem resembles the latter. Kohlrabi has been created by artificial selection for lateral meristem growth; its origin in nature is the same as that of cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, and brussels sprouts: They are all bred from, and the same species as, the wild mustard plant.
Lettuce, Romaine Romaine or Cos lettuce (often called simply Romaine or Cos) (Lactuca sativa L. var. longifolia) is a variety of lettuce which grows in a long head of sturdy leaves with a firm rib down the center. Unlike most lettuces, it is tolerant of heat.
Lettuce, Iceberg Iceberg Lettuce is a temperate annual or biennial plant most often grown as a leaf vegetable. In some countries, it is typically eaten cold and raw, in salads, hamburgers, tacos, and many other dishes. In some places, including China, lettuce is typically eaten cooked and use of the stem is as important as use of the leaf.
Red Onion Red onions are cultivars of the onion with purplish red skin and white flesh tinged with red, unlike Spanish Onions, which have yellow skins. These onions tend to be medium to large in size and have a mild to sweet flavor. They are often consumed raw, added for color to salads, and grilled or lightly cooked with other foods. Red onions are available throughout the year.
Peas A pea is the small, edible round green bean which grows in a pod on the leguminous vine Pisum sativum, or in some cases to the immature pods. This legume is cooked as a vegetable in many cultures. Several other seeds of the family Fabaceae, most of them round, are also called peas; this article deals with the species Pisum sativum and its cultivars. The pea plant is an annual plant, with a lifecycle of a year. The average pea weighs between 0.1 and 0.36 grams
Potato The potato (Solanum tuberosum) is a perennial plant of the Solanaceae, or nightshade, family, commonly grown for its starchy tuber. Potatoes are the world's most widely grown tuber crop, and the fourth largest food crop in terms of fresh produce — after rice, wheat, and maize ('corn'). The potato was domesticated in southern Peru[1] and is important to the culture of the Andes, where farmers grow many different varieties that have a remarkable diversity of colors and shapes. In pre-Colombian times they were also widely cultivated on Chiloe island, in Chile. Potatoes spread from South America to Spain and from there to the rest of the world after European colonization in the late 1400s and early 1500s and have since become an important field crop.
Pumpkin A pumpkin is a squash fruit, usually orange in color when ripe (although there are also white, red, and gray varieties). Pumpkins grow as a gourd from a trailing vine of the genus Cucurbita (family Cucurbitaceae). Cultivated in North America, continental Europe, Australia, India and some other countries, Cucurbita species include Curcurbita pepo, Cucurbita maxima, Cucurbita mixta, and Cucurbita moschata — all plants native to the Western hemisphere. The pumpkin varies greatly in form, being sometimes nearly globular, but more generally oblong or ovoid in shape. The rind is smooth and variable in color. The larger kinds acquire a weight of 40 to 80 lb (18 to 36 kg) but smaller varieties are in vogue for garden culture. Pumpkins are a popular food, with their insides commonly eaten cooked and served in dishes such as pumpkin pie; the seeds can be roasted as a snack. Pumpkins are traditionally used to carve Jack-o'-lanterns for use in Halloween celebrations.
Spinach Spinach (Spinacia oleracea) is a flowering plant in the family Amaranthaceae, native to central and southwestern Asia. It is an annual plant (rarely biennial), which grows to a height of up to 30 cm. Spinach may survive over winter in temperate regions. The leaves are alternate, simple, ovate to triangular-based, very variable in size from about 3-30 cm long and 1-15 cm broad, with larger leaves at the base of the plant and small leaves higher on the flowering stem. The flowers are inconspicuous, yellow-green, 3-4 mm diameter, maturing into a small hard dry lumpy fruit cluster 5-10 mm across containing several seeds.
Squash Squashes generally refer to four species of the genus Cucurbita native to the New World, also called Marrows depending on variety or the nationality of the speaker. In North America, Squash is loosely grouped into summer squash or winter squash,as well as autumn squash(another name is cheese squash) depending on whether they are harvested as immature fruits (summer squash) or mature fruits (autumn squash or winter squash).Gourds are from the same family as Squashes. Well known type of Squash is the Pumpkin and Courgette.
Watermelon Watermelon (Citrullus lanatus, Family Cucurbitaceae) is both a fruit and a vegetable[1] and plant of a vine-like (climber and trailer) herb originally from southern Africa and one of the most common type of melon. This flowering plant produces a special type of fruit known by botanists as a pepo, which has a thick rind (exocarp) and fleshy center (mesocarp and endocarp); pepos are derived from an inferior ovary and are characteristic of the Cucurbitaceae. The watermelon fruit, loosely considered a type of melon (although not in the genus Cucumis), has a smooth exterior rind (green and yellow) and a juicy, sweet, usually red or yellow, but sometimes orange, interior flesh. The flesh consists of highly developed placental tissue within the fruit. The former name Citrullus vulgaris (vulgaris meaning "common" — Shosteck, 1974), is now a synonym of the accepted scientific name for watermelon, Citrullus lanatus.
Zucchini Zucchini (IPA: /zu'kini/, in North American and Australian English) or Courgette (IPA: /k??'??t/, in New Zealand and British English) is a small summer squash. Its Scientific name is Cucurbita pepo (a species which also includes other squash).It can either be yellow or green or light green, and generally has a similar shape to a ridged cucumber, though a few cultivars are available that produce round or bottle-shaped fruit. Unlike the cucumber it is usually served cooked, often steamed, boiled, grilled, stuffed and baked, barbecued, fried, or incorporated in other recipes such as souffles. Its flower can be eaten stuffed and is a delicacy when deep fried as tempura. Many people find zucchini is best when quickly cooked so it still retains its firmness and flavor, and 2 to 4 minutes is all it takes to cook a zucchini to perfection. With additional cooking it falls apart into a watery mass, which for some styles and tastes, may be the objective, as when cooking a ratatouille. (It should be noted though that there are variations on ratatouille where many of the vegetables get done to either the barely cooked or medium cooked stage.) Culinarily, zucchini is treated as a vegetable which means it is usually cooked and presented as a savory dish or accompaniment. However, biologically, the zucchini is an immature fruit, being the swollen ovary of the female zucchini flower. Zucchini are usually picked, when used for food, when the seeds are soft and immature, seldom over 8in/20cm in length. Mature zucchini can be as much as three feet long, but are often fibrous and not appetizing to eat.

Beets

Wild forms of Beta vulgaris occur along the shores of the Mediterranean, extending eastwards as far as Indonesia, and westwards along the coasts of the Atlantic up to the Canary Islands and southern Norway. Beta vulgaris, grown for its leaves, was taken into cultivation in the eastern Mediterranean or the Middle East and is first mentioned in the literature in Mesopotamia in the 9th century BC.

Broccoli

Roman references to a cabbage-family vegetable that may have been broccoli are less than perfectly clear: the Roman natural history writer, Pliny the Elder, wrote about a vegetable that fit the description of broccoli. Some vegetable scholars recognize broccoli in the cookbook of Apicius.

Brussels Sprouts

During the sixteenth century they enjoyed a popularity in the southern Netherlands that eventually spread throughout Europe.[1] Cultivation exists in the United States including certain coastal areas of San Mateo, Santa Cruz and Monterey Counties of California.

Cabbage

Broadly speaking, cabbage varieties come in two groups, early and late. The early varieties mature in about 45 days. They produce small heads which do not keep well and are intended for consumption while fresh. The late cabbage matures in about 87 days, and produces a larger head.

Carrot

The wild ancestors of the carrot are likely to have come from Afghanistan, which remains the center of diversity of D. carota, the wild carrot, sometimes called Queen Anne's lace. Selective breeding over the centuries of a naturally-occurring subspecies of the wild carrot, Daucus carota subsp. sativus has produced the familiar garden vegetable.

Cauliflower

The preferred garden soil for cauliflower is well drained, is moist, and has significant organic matter with a pH of 6 to 7. Cauliflower is typically started indoors six to eight weeks prior to setting out in the garden and is typically ready for harvest two months after transplanting. As with all brassicas, seeds germinate best with a soil temperature of 25±1 °C (77±2 °F). The vegetable requires a cool, moist climate - if temperatures go too high, the plants will not produce flower heads, if too low a temperature is reached, the plants might button, creating small heads. It is cold tolerant, but will not survive hard frosts. Of all the brassicas, cauliflowers have the largest number of growth requirements, and the ability to successfully grow cauliflower in a home garden is often thought to be the hallmark of well-managed soil and a good gardener.

Corn

There are several theories about the specific origin of maize in Mesoamerica:

1. It is a direct domestication of a Mexican annual teosinte, Zea mays ssp. parviglumis, native to the Balsas River valley of southern Mexico, with up to 12% of its genetic material obtained from Zea mays ssp. mexicana through introgression;

2. It derives from hybridization between a small domesticated maize (a slightly changed form of a wild maize) and a teosinte of section Luxuriantes, either Z. luxurians or Z. diploperennis;

3. It underwent two or more domestications either of a wild maize or of a teosinte;

4. It evolved from a hybridization of Z. diploperennis by Tripsacum dactyloides. (The term "teosinte" describes all species and subspecies in the genus Zea, excluding Zea mays ssp. mays.) In the late 1930s, Paul Mangelsdorf suggested that domesticated maize was the result of a hybridization event between an unknown wild maize and a species of Tripsacum, a related genus. However, the proposed role of tripsacum (gama grass) in the origins of maize has been refuted by modern genetic analysis.

Cucumber

The cucumber has been cultivated for at least 3,000 years in Western Asia, and was probably introduced to other parts of Europe by the Romans. Records of cucumber cultivation appear in France in the 9th Century, England in the 14th Century, and in North America by the mid-16th Century.

Dill Weed

Dill originated in central Asia. Zohary and Hopf remark that "wild and weedy types of dill are widespread in the Mediterranean basin and in West Asia."

Although several twigs of dill were found in the tomb of Amenhotep II, they report that the earliest archeological evidence for its cultivation comes from late Neolithic lake shore settlements in Switzerland.[1] Traces have been found in Roman ruins in Great Britain.

Green Beans

Green beans are the unripe fruits of any kind of bean, including the yardlong bean, the hyacinth bean, the pea, the winged bean, the carper (vellum) bean, and especially the common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris), whose pods are also usually called string beans in the northeastern United States, but can also go by snap beans. Varieties have been bred especially for the fleshiness, flavor, or sweetness of their pods. Smaller bean pods are often referred to by the French name haricots verts.

Kale

Until the end of the Middle Ages, kale was the common green vegetable in all of Europe. Curly leaved varieties of cabbage already existed along with flat leafed varieties in Greece, in the fourth century BC. These forms, which were referred to by the Romans as Sabellian kale, are considered to be the the ancestors of modern kales. Today, one may differentiate between varieties according to the low, intermediate or high length of the stem, with varying leaf types. The leaf colours range from light green through green, dark green and violet-green to violet-brown. Russian kale was introduced into Canada (and then into the U.S.) by Russian traders in the 19th century.

Kohlrabi

Kohlrabi (Brassica oleracea Gongylodes Group) is a low, stout cultivar of the cabbage which has been selected for its swollen, nearly spherical, Sputnik-like shape. The name comes from the German Kohl ("cabbage") plus Rabi ("turnip"), because the swollen stem resembles the latter. Kohlrabi has been created by artificial selection for lateral meristem growth; its origin in nature is the same as that of cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, and brussels sprouts: They are all bred from, and the same species as, the wild mustard plant.

Lettuce, Romaine

Romaine or Cos lettuce (often called simply Romaine or Cos) (Lactuca sativa L. var. longifolia) is a variety of lettuce which grows in a long head of sturdy leaves with a firm rib down the center. Unlike most lettuces, it is tolerant of heat.

Lettuce, Iceberg

Iceberg Lettuce is a temperate annual or biennial plant most often grown as a leaf vegetable. In some countries, it is typically eaten cold and raw, in salads, hamburgers, tacos, and many other dishes. In some places, including China, lettuce is typically eaten cooked and use of the stem is as important as use of the leaf.

Red Onion

Red onions are cultivars of the onion with purplish red skin and white flesh tinged with red, unlike Spanish Onions, which have yellow skins. These onions tend to be medium to large in size and have a mild to sweet flavor. They are often consumed raw, added for color to salads, and grilled or lightly cooked with other foods. Red onions are available throughout the year.

Peas

A pea is the small, edible round green bean which grows in a pod on the leguminous vine Pisum sativum, or in some cases to the immature pods. This legume is cooked as a vegetable in many cultures. Several other seeds of the family Fabaceae, most of them round, are also called peas; this article deals with the species Pisum sativum and its cultivars. The pea plant is an annual plant, with a lifecycle of a year. The average pea weighs between 0.1 and 0.36 grams

Potato

The potato (Solanum tuberosum) is a perennial plant of the Solanaceae, or nightshade, family, commonly grown for its starchy tuber. Potatoes are the world's most widely grown tuber crop, and the fourth largest food crop in terms of fresh produce — after rice, wheat, and maize ('corn'). The potato was domesticated in southern Peru[1] and is important to the culture of the Andes, where farmers grow many different varieties that have a remarkable diversity of colors and shapes. In pre-Colombian times they were also widely cultivated on Chiloe island, in Chile. Potatoes spread from South America to Spain and from there to the rest of the world after European colonization in the late 1400s and early 1500s and have since become an important field crop.

Pumpkin

A pumpkin is a squash fruit, usually orange in color when ripe (although there are also white, red, and gray varieties). Pumpkins grow as a gourd from a trailing vine of the genus Cucurbita (family Cucurbitaceae). Cultivated in North America, continental Europe, Australia, India and some other countries, Cucurbita species include Curcurbita pepo, Cucurbita maxima, Cucurbita mixta, and Cucurbita moschata — all plants native to the Western hemisphere. The pumpkin varies greatly in form, being sometimes nearly globular, but more generally oblong or ovoid in shape. The rind is smooth and variable in color. The larger kinds acquire a weight of 40 to 80 lb (18 to 36 kg) but smaller varieties are in vogue for garden culture. Pumpkins are a popular food, with their insides commonly eaten cooked and served in dishes such as pumpkin pie; the seeds can be roasted as a snack. Pumpkins are traditionally used to carve Jack-o'-lanterns for use in Halloween celebrations.

Spinach

Spinach (Spinacia oleracea) is a flowering plant in the family Amaranthaceae, native to central and southwestern Asia. It is an annual plant (rarely biennial), which grows to a height of up to 30 cm. Spinach may survive over winter in temperate regions. The leaves are alternate, simple, ovate to triangular-based, very variable in size from about 3-30 cm long and 1-15 cm broad, with larger leaves at the base of the plant and small leaves higher on the flowering stem. The flowers are inconspicuous, yellow-green, 3-4 mm diameter, maturing into a small hard dry lumpy fruit cluster 5-10 mm across containing several seeds.

Squash

Squashes generally refer to four species of the genus Cucurbita native to the New World, also called Marrows depending on variety or the nationality of the speaker. In North America, Squash is loosely grouped into summer squash or winter squash,as well as autumn squash(another name is cheese squash) depending on whether they are harvested as immature fruits (summer squash) or mature fruits (autumn squash or winter squash).Gourds are from the same family as Squashes. Well known type of Squash is the Pumpkin and Courgette.

Watermelon

Watermelon (Citrullus lanatus, Family Cucurbitaceae) is both a fruit and a vegetable[1] and plant of a vine-like (climber and trailer) herb originally from southern Africa and one of the most common type of melon. This flowering plant produces a special type of fruit known by botanists as a pepo, which has a thick rind (exocarp) and fleshy center (mesocarp and endocarp); pepos are derived from an inferior ovary and are characteristic of the Cucurbitaceae. The watermelon fruit, loosely considered a type of melon (although not in the genus Cucumis), has a smooth exterior rind (green and yellow) and a juicy, sweet, usually red or yellow, but sometimes orange, interior flesh. The flesh consists of highly developed placental tissue within the fruit. The former name Citrullus vulgaris (vulgaris meaning "common" — Shosteck, 1974), is now a synonym of the accepted scientific name for watermelon, Citrullus lanatus.

Zucchini

Zucchini (IPA: /zu'kini/, in North American and Australian English) or Courgette (IPA: /k??'??t/, in New Zealand and British English) is a small summer squash. Its Scientific name is Cucurbita pepo (a species which also includes other squash).It can either be yellow or green or light green, and generally has a similar shape to a ridged cucumber, though a few cultivars are available that produce round or bottle-shaped fruit. Unlike the cucumber it is usually served cooked, often steamed, boiled, grilled, stuffed and baked, barbecued, fried, or incorporated in other recipes such as souffles. Its flower can be eaten stuffed and is a delicacy when deep fried as tempura. Many people find zucchini is best when quickly cooked so it still retains its firmness and flavor, and 2 to 4 minutes is all it takes to cook a zucchini to perfection. With additional cooking it falls apart into a watery mass, which for some styles and tastes, may be the objective, as when cooking a ratatouille. (It should be noted though that there are variations on ratatouille where many of the vegetables get done to either the barely cooked or medium cooked stage.) Culinarily, zucchini is treated as a vegetable which means it is usually cooked and presented as a savory dish or accompaniment. However, biologically, the zucchini is an immature fruit, being the swollen ovary of the female zucchini flower. Zucchini are usually picked, when used for food, when the seeds are soft and immature, seldom over 8in/20cm in length. Mature zucchini can be as much as three feet long, but are often fibrous and not appetizing to eat.