STYLE : GARDENS : A Western Wonderland

It’s winter in Southern California, and as the sun settles low on the horizon, the afternoon light illuminates the surrounding hills like a Courbet painting. The days are shorter and cooler; smoke curls out of chimneys. In the East, people are turning up the heat and shoveling snow, but here in Echo Park, I’m heading for my garden.

You can have your beaches and your endless sun-drenched pool parties. To me, the special perk, the real reason to live in Los Angeles, is winter. Sure, spring brings balmy days and a flower frenzy, but when it comes to putting vegetables on the table, winter-- our winter--is my idea of a wonderland.

When I first started gardening 20 years ago, my winter vegetable plot was a poor, limited thing. Today, though, the number of cool-season seeds and plants increases every year, thanks to the Asian and European varieties available in stores and through catalogues.

My garden isn’t huge. I have 10 raised beds constructed of 2-by-10-inch cedar planks. Two beds are only 3 by 4 feet; one, 5 by 6; the rest, in between. Each year, I plant mustards and cabbages and infinite variations on leafy greens, which are easy to grow and gratifyingly healthy. And they’re beautiful: the lovely dark-green bok choy rosette called tatsoi; small mounds of pale or red-tipped butterhead lettuce; graceful fountains of mustards and kales; lacy heaps of frisee endive and mizuna.

I set out a few things in late September and manage a few salads before winter settles in, but my favorite time to plant is early January. Vegetables started now grow faster than those hanging around since fall, getting the benefit of longer days and the magical February rains. In January, I plant the quick crops--Asian greens, escarole, lettuce, root vegetables--and I’m feasting on cress, radishes, baby turnips, arugula and other greens shortly after Valentine’s Day.

I’m a lazy gardener, which is another reason I appreciate winter. Fewer weeds, fewer bugs, less watering, less mulching. I wander through the garden in the morning, checking for insects, then I breeze through again in the evening, when I pick dinner, sometimes by flashlight.

Winter here is a time for cabbage relatives--cauliflower, broccoli (and its first cousins, broccoli raab and romanesco), Brussels sprouts, kohlrabi, collards. For variety and aesthetics, I interplant, meaning I never put only one kind of plant in a raised bed. I might have celery next to fava beans and turnips, with onions, garlic or shallots snuggling up to beets, carrots and lettuce. Leeks are easy to tuck along the edges, as are those salad essentials, arugula, mache and cress. Among herbs, winter is the best season for cilantro, chervil and dill.

When it comes to bok choy, I have many favorites. Joi Choi, a hybrid bok choy, doesn’t leap to seed at the first warm breeze, and the adorable Mei Qing Choi, a baby bok choy, remains infant-size no matter how long I ignore it. Kale is an assertive presence, which is one way of saying it can grow four feet tall. Packed with vitamins and reliable as the tide, it earns every inch of space I give it. Besides the glorious red Russian kale and the odd-looking, blue-leaved Italian lacinato, I plant many of those familiar green curly-leaf varieties that show up as garnish on restaurant plates but deserve to be the main event.

Lettuces are well-behaved: They don’t ramble or tumble or invade another plant’s space. They just sit there and steadily replace all the leaves I pick for salads. Lettuces now come in a variety of shapes, sizes and colors, including heirlooms and hybrids, romaines, butterheads and leaf varieties (don’t bother with the iceberg types--too much fuss, not enough flavor).

Although cabbages can be difficult, they are worth trying because the selection is so limited in local supermarkets. The array of cabbage seeds is bewildering: early ones, late ones, mid-seasons, flat tops, pointed heads, red heads and Savoys. With their crinkled deep-green leaves, Savoys are the prize, but just try to find them at the store. For that matter, try to find them at a farmers’ market.

The chicory family is a reliable favorite. Radicchio is the most famous in these parts, and there are finally varieties that don’t have to be pampered to attain their maximum red color. Belgian endive is still dismayingly labor-intensive, but with such sweet rewards: Grown as a green, it looks a bit like a dandelion all summer. The leaves are cut back in winter, the roots dug up and replanted in sand, tucked away in a dark cellar or closet, and-- voila!-- in a couple of weeks, pale yellow, slightly bitter leaf spears called chicons emerge; these are the $5-a-pound delicacy found at the best produce departments and restaurants.

Plain and curly chicories are a lot less maintenance; they resemble lettuce, but they have the added complexity of a mild bitterness and a slightly crunchy texture. Plain old escarole doesn’t look like much, but in soups, frittatas and stews, it justifies all the garden space it receives. The fanciest endive is curly frisee, a frilly little thing that makes even the dullest salad look chic. Another reason I love chicories: I have never seen a bug on them.

Many winter vegetables are available at nurseries in six-packs or four-inch pots, but I’ve found that several of these beauties don’t like transplanting. Instead, I grow them from seed exactly where I want them in the garden. Bok choy and kohlrabi perform best if direct-seeded into the ground; same goes for cilantro and all the root crops. While I’m at it, I always direct-seed nasturtium and calendula flowers, both delicious in salads.

Winter gardening is not always a thrilling experience. I confess that I’ve had failures. Although many gardening friends do very well with them in this climate, I’ve given up on peas and spinach. And I must mention two disadvantages to a winter garden, both pests: imported cabbage worms and cabbage aphids. Since I don’t use chemical sprays, I’ve found that the worms are easily controlled with a Bacillus thuringiensis (BT) spray, a natural control sold under various brand names, such as Dipel. Whether spraying or hand-picking, I’ve learned never to let my guard down. The worms, which are the caterpillar stage of a white butterfly, can devour most of a young cabbage (their target of choice) in one day. Even worse are the aphids. When I first started my winter-gardening career, I discovered masses of gray dots inside the cabbage heads and clustered on the undersides of the leaves. Although aphids don’t eat a plant, they sap its energy and stall its growth. So I blasted away with the water hose, which seemed to help, but only for a day or two. Suddenly, huge numbers regrouped and attacked overnight. I mixed up the only organic aphid control that I know of, Safer Insecticidal Soap, and “cleansed” the aphids. Unfortunately, their relatives appeared two days later.

Interplanting cabbages with aromatic herbs such as rue seems to confuse the butterflies and aphids, but it doesn’t defeat them. After a few years of frustration, I abandoned aesthetics altogether. Now, as soon as my cabbage plants are in the ground, I erect hoops over them and drape the hoops with a lightweight, semitransparent covering, such as Reemay or Agronet, securing all edges. These shrouds are not pretty, but they are effective.

So, you ask, is it worth the time and effort? How much can I really get out of my back-yard vegetable plot? A lot . My Sussex trug overflows with varicolored lettuces. My big, ugly green wire basket, purchased from Burpee about 20 years ago, bulges with greens. Pounds and pounds of produce, all organic, all dirt-cheap. Picking it is almost as much fun as eating it.

So, while my relatives in Brooklyn and Kansas City are still staring gloomily at snow and sleet and frozen ground, wondering if spring will ever spring, I’m outdoors in a T-shirt, caressing my collards. I savor every minute of this because it goes by so quickly. After all, next month I have to start thinking about . . . tomatoes.