Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1882-05-17
ENGLAND'S VEGETABLES.
She Has Very Few Varieties and Does not Sue
cessfuIly Cultivate All of Them--- The Absence of
Sunlight the Cause Of the Death of 50 Green's
[From the Pail Mall Gazette.1

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able greenstuffs-naturally raises once
more the perennial question, Why have
we In England no vegetables? To doubt
the fact is impossible-at least to any
body who knows what real vegetables
are like. Sir" said an American
stranger at restaurant in the Strand
one day, 'Sir," this is the one thing you
can raise In your country, and we can't
raise III ours-a mutton chop; but then
you never tasted green peas in all
your life" That antithesis puts the
great vegetable question in nutshell.
1t is impossible in the same country to
have good meat and good vegetables.
For the best beef and mutton are pro-
duct of the soft, tender, English green
sward, which only exists in a few coun-
tries along the Atlantic seaboard of
Europe, and owes it's origin to the con-
slant rainfall.
The same causes which give us good
meat, however, deny us in England the
possibility of good fruit and vegetables.
For while the heritage requires copious
rain, the fruits, seeds, pods, flowers,
buds and other miscellaneous objects
which We class from the culinary point
of view as vegetables all require copious
sunlight. That is why we have none of
them. Our only good vegetables are
such as very young rhubarb, seakale,
asparagus and celery, which are the
blanched sprouting shoots of perennial
plants. These mostly come in spring.
time, and as they are none the worse. or
even all the better, for little wholesome
soaking, they manage to survive our eli
mate well enough in the long run. But
most other vegetables are more or less
fru1ty In their nature, and really to taste
these one must go to America or Italy
for choice the first. Of thoroughly fruity
egetables-such as the tomato-we in
England know nothing. We never have
sun enough to ripen them properly; and
even with all the appliances of modern
gardeners, they never get thoroughly
red and soft throughout in our gardens
as they do in the open air under Cana
dian or italian sky. They always have
half-green taste and are wholly lacking
In the true rich tomato flavor. Indeed,
the timed American specimens, though
tasting of the solder, OF course, are bet
ter savored after all than our poor,
starved, sunless English things. As to
purple egg-fruit and green chow-chows,
we know them not at all; while the pro-
fusion of rich, red-feshed watermelons,
primrose-skinned squashes and golden
pumpkins in q Massachusetts market,
would astonish Covent Garden, and set
some nascent Turner to work with all
the pigments of his palette to try his
hand at new and many-cOlored sub
ject. These things require the sun to
ripen them, and we see his face here as
a rule for some two and half hours
weekly, as duly registered at Glynde
Place, Lewes. Then, again, there are
the winter cherries, the sweet potatoes,
and best of all earthly vegetables, green
Indian corn, eaten off the cob with fresh
butter, and likest to nectar of all mortal
delicacies. AS for pulse generally, our
beans are all stringy; we have neither
the veracity nor the tenderness of the
American bean. Our peas have some
good points-for English peas; but they
are not half SO large or luscious, or melt
ing as American peas. They take too
long growing and have got old and hard
before they are big enough to pick.
The delicious, crinkly, eatable pod pea
would be impossible here, it would have
got tough AID sinewy month before it
was ready for cooking. We grow buck
wheat TO feed our pheasants, but it never
ripens as it ought, and buckwheat pam
! cakes at breakfast will doubtless be an
unknown luxury with us forever.
In the matter of leafy vegetables we
can do little better, but not enough to
boast about. We are strong in salad;
our climate provides us with plenty of
fresh green lettuce, and plenty of slugs,
too, to hide in its recesses. But endige
does not flourish; it is a scrubby-looking
plant in England, though we make up
for both crosses and the lesser salad
stuffs. Our roots, too, are good; who
will deny the British farmer the glory
of his turnips, his beets and his man.
gold wurzel? Whenit comes to edible flow
ers, however, we are hopelessly left in the
lurch. Our top artichokes are the poor
est and hardest in the world; they con-
tain a maximum of fibrous, UNBEATABLE
bract and minimum of soft, starchy
pulp. In the south of France, Italy and
America you can often eat the whole
hower-head, choke and all; in England
you can only extract pitiful pittance of
soft mouthful off the base of each
great leathery scale. It would be i'm
possible to dress English artichokes in
fried butter, as they do so deliciously at
Florence. One might as well eat fried
boots. Our cauihowers and broccoli are
not nearly as good as the American; they
are neither so white nor so delicate in
flavor. We can grow cucumbers (under
glass;, because cucumbers are eaten
green, but what miserable farce are
our vegetable marrows What is true
of vegetables is even more true of fruits.
To be sure, our English dollhouse
grapes are the best in the world; but for
strawberries, raspberries, currants,
gooseberries, plums and cherries, we
must go to America. Our peaches are
success; our apples national failure,
and our pears are a standing insult to
the human intelligence. But we may at
least congratulate ourselves that with
the aid of glass and stoves we can obtain
heat and light enough to grow the best
pineapples in the world, at the moderate
price of one guinea apiece. In Jamai-
ca they usually sell at two for three half
pence.