| "You
can't really do that! Can you?" asked
my seven-year-old son, both incredulous and intrigued.
"Sure,"
I replied. "You can grow everything
you need to make a pizza here in our home garden. Tomatoes. Garlic.
Basil..."
|
We're
talking about a vegetarian pizza
here, of course, and if we want cheese we'll have to rely on mozzarella
from the market (no goats or cows on this acreage).
We could grow and
mill
our own grain for the crust too, but the store-bought kind will do.
"You
can't grow everything you need to
make a pizza, but you can grow lots of goodies to pile on top," says
Constance
Hardesty, who authored the book Grow
Your Own Pizza: Gardening Plans
and
Recipes for Kids (Fulcrum, 2000). |
Hardesty
says to list the veggies you like
on your pizza, then start planting. Her recommendations for a personal
pizza garden plot include:
- 1
Mexican oregano plant
- 1
Spicy Bush or Purple Globe basil plant
- 1 2
Roma VF tomato plants (Pixie or Tom Thumb
varieties if you're growing them in pots)
- 1
set of green onions
- 2
California Wonder or Earlired bell peppers
- 1
package of Aristocrat zucchini
- Several
garlic plants
It will be mid to
late summer before these
veggies are all ripe and ready for harvest. Garlic stems must die back
and zucchini must be about 5 inches long before they're ready for the
table.
But once
harvested and stored, the crop
from your home garden can provide the makings for a personal pizza for
months to come.
See
Hardesty's recipe for One
Pizza Twelve Ways
|
by Constance Hardesty.
Paperback
-
128 pages.
Fulcrum, 2000.
"Grow
Your Own Pizza"
shows you how to grow great-tasting
food the natural
way, without chemicals," explains gardening trainer Constance Hardesty.
Designed
as
an activity resource book for school children, this text is also a
handy
guide for adult gardeners and family cooks. The gardening advice is
well
grounded and the recipes are simple, but interesting.
Garden
plots
for nearly two dozen different types of gardens are mapped out, with
varietal
recommendations and cultivation tips included.
The plans are organized
into sections as Easy, Medium or Advanced to match the development and
gardening interest level of each youngster.
No large
garden
plots are required for any of these plans; most can be grown in
containers,
flower beds or small garden plots. Basic gardening tools, such as a
shovel
and rake, are sufficient.
Hardesty,
an
instructor at the Denver Botanic Gardens, offers handy tips for both
garden
and kitchen. Her innovative garden plans and clever recipes help to
make
gardening more fun for kids of all ages.
|
