More Sightseeing Than Growing in Start of 24th Season of ‘Garden’

“The Victory Garden” begins its 24th year with a nine-week whip through Iceland, Scotland and England but, if the first episode on Iceland is any indication, this trip is more travelogue than garden guide.

Adrian Boom, an English horticulturist who has been the show’s international correspondent in recent years, does visit a hothouse operation that grows tomatoes and peppers from February to October--an unbelievably long season--and pays only $150 a month for heating, thanks to energy provided by the country’s geothermal hot springs.

(Anyone who enjoys gardening will be relieved to see the peppers are infested with aphids, a large family of insects that suck the juice from plants. Never let it be said that “Victory Garden” prettifies gardening.)

But the show itself misses an obvious chance to complete its explanation of the country’s limited agricultural industry.

When series chef Marian Morash visits an Icelandic grocery store to ooh and ahh over the foodstuffs, she points out locally grown tomatoes and peppers but doesn’t mention prices until she comes to first-crop cauliflower, a whopping $6.50 a head, and Dole’s Arizona-grown iceberg lettuce, $4 a head. Interesting, but it would have been a lot more interesting to find out if those cheap-energy tomatoes were just as cheap for consumers.

Anyone who wants to believe that travel is enriched by regional differences in cuisine will be seriously disappointed in the next segment. During a visit to the Saga Hotel Grill in the capital of Reykjavik, Morash promises an Icelandic specialty. It turns out to be fresh cod steaks (OK, so they’re Icelandic) stacked on potato rounds and topped with asparagus, langoustines, celeriac puree and red wine sauce in the tired old “vertical” cuisine presentation.

Perhaps these are all quibbles but, for garden lovers, there’s not much to do except wait for later “Victory Garden” episodes that promise a look at the challenge of growing on Iceland’s old lava flows, the often overlooked private gardens of Scotland and a finale in East Anglia’s flatlands.

*

* “The Victory Garden” can be seen Saturdays at 10:30 a.m. on KCET.