Knee High by the 4th of July?

Maybe if you are that Chinese basketball player. Our garden is growing like all-get-out at this time of year, and the hot weather we got last week pushed some of our heat-loving crops to do great things. On the right is a photo of our Hopi Blue flour corn. Half of this 240 sq ft bed is planted with seed I saved from last year using hand pollination as recommended in Seed to Seed, a book published by Seed Savers Exchange (an organization advocating the use of open-pollinated seed, as opposed to the artificial processes of hybrid and genetic modification). In the next month or two it will get up to eight or nine feet and tassel, and I will fine-tune my hand-pollinating skills.

Amaranth is another of the main-season crops we tout so highly. Hailing from central America, amaranth was the staple food of the Aztecs and the backbone of their culture and worship. Recognizing this, the Spanish Conquistadores banned it and actively destroyed it wherever it was encountered. It has been theorized that, had that not happened, amaranth would be to our culture what corn is now (maybe aside from all the recently discovered derivatives). It produces a brilliant plume of flowers that Victorians might have called beautiful, others might call gaudy. The seed is tiny but plentiful, and can be boiled, ground, and, yes, popped. The young greens are also tasty.
Quinoa was first cultivated high in the Andes of South America, so you might wonder why we'd attempt it way down here. Happily, it can grow anywhere from 12,000 feet down to sea level, depending on the variety. Its claim to fame among health food fans is that it is a whole protein, containing all of the amino acids that humans need. Plus it cooks in about 20 minutes and take on flavors easily (so don't eat it alone expecting to be impressed). The seeds grow naturally coated with saponin (a soapy substance) that is so bitter that birds don't bother it. The good news is that when you buy it in the health food store it has already been washed free of the bitterness. The bad news is that the store won't make house calls to wash the quinoa you grow yourself. We're still working here on the most efficient way to process it.
Rye stands out in this post as an over-wintered crop instead of a main-season one. It is one of my favorites of all we have here, between its beauty, its height, and its usefulness. The tallest cereal crop we grow, its ready tendency to host microorganisms (like the poisonous fungus ergot) makes its grain the prime ingredient for sourdough starter (a yeast kept alive through a mixture of rye flour and water). And we thrive on sourdough bread in this house. Like all the other crops I mention in this post, one of rye's biggest chores within the garden is as a compost material. The mature stalks can be easily saved for months or years after threshing to provide mature material when you are ready to build a pile. Rye also has an incredible root system, which means good things for soil quality in the garden.
Finally, Jerusalem Artichoke, a.k.a Sunchoke. While it produces an incredibly tall stalk, the flowers are all pretty small. The edible part of the plant is the tuber, which has, depending on what you read and whom you ask, a nutty flavor, a starchy flavor, or a flavor like to that of an artichoke. Which leads to the name. There is much speculation as to the origin of the name "Jerusalem", for instance that it may be a corruption of the Italian "girasole", following the sun. But I have discovered that whenever one puts "Jerusalem" in front a common garden noun it generally means "kind of like but not actually a". For instance, Jerusalem Sage and Jerusalem Cricket.
All of these crops, besides the rye, are in for the main-season long-haul, and will be harvested sometime in September or October. Having shown them as juveniles, you can expect some full-grown images from us later on...