Filling the Fall Garden

My starter plants from Richters have arrived!

I came across Richters while searching for hard-to-find plants that weren’t available at my local nursery. I was so stoked to find that they carried Vietnamese plants like ngò gai and rau răm! One of my projects in the garden is a Vietnamese herb bed, so far populated by a couple of tia tô plants given by my dad, and a delicious Vietnamese basil.

But the true stunner in the group is a plant called bloody dock (or blood spinach), which has the most beautiful deep red veins running through its leaves. I call this a “disco salad green” — uncommon but so tasty. Another disco green from Richters is salad burnet, which is purported to have a cucumbery flavor, and True French sorrel, which has a lemony tang. Technically these are herbs, but I think they’ll be perfect accents in a salad. And they’re perennial!