Vietnamese vegetable garden in the middle of Europe

"The supermarket near my house is selling basil, lemongrass, and Vietnamese coriander for sour soup. If anyone needs it, let me know so I can go buy it all at once." The message from a friend in a group of Vietnamese women in the Savoie region of France, where I live, was enthusiastically received.

The price is not cheap but everyone asks to buy 1-2 types, because if you do not live in big cities, it will be difficult to find these vegetables to cook pure Vietnamese dishes.

Amateur farmer

Spring is the planting season for families in temperate regions. Unlike Westerners who often grow lettuce, potatoes, carrots, and tomatoes, Vietnamese people grow squash, pumpkin, bitter melon, chayote, water spinach, and indispensable herbs such as coriander, coriander, perilla, Vietnamese mint, Vietnamese mint, Vietnamese basil, lemongrass, etc.

Visiting Thien Y's house in Bauges - France in the early summer, I couldn't help but admire the lush green garden of Vietnamese vegetables and fruits. Thien Y grows everything from bitter melon, squash, chayote to herbs.

Originally living in the city, it was only after settling in France that Thien Y really got into gardening. "At first, I didn't know anything, then I learned from the experience of associations and groups. With everyone's enthusiastic guidance, now I'm a bit familiar with "farming" work" - Y humorously shared.

My former colleague Phuong Hien stunned me even more when she showed me a photo of a trellis of squash laden with fruit at her house in the Netherlands. When she was still in Vietnam, Hien claimed that she was a Fire element and could not grow any plants. But now she has a garden of nearly 20 ^square meters with squash, squash and various herbs flourishing.

Ms. Phuong Hien and the trellis of squash laden with fruit

"Giant" squash in Ms. Phuong Hien's garden

Having only ventured into farming since "following her husband and giving up the game" to become a daughter-in-law in a foreign land, Hien confided: "Growing helps me to relieve my homesickness, but I can't eat all the food. When I was growing, I wanted to grow all kinds of vegetables, but when the vegetables were in full bloom in mid-summer, I had to beg relatives and acquaintances who lived nearby to come and get some for me to eat."

On social media these days, I see pictures of gardening almost every day. Only when living far from home can I appreciate how precious ordinary vegetables become. Cooking sour fish requires Vietnamese coriander and dill; eating bun cha without perilla and Vietnamese balm will be… dull.

These vegetables are almost impossible to find in Western supermarkets. If they are available, they are just a few sprigs of coriander or dill in small, pretty boxes at very Western prices. Water spinach and chayote occasionally appear in some specialized vegetable supermarkets, but at sky-high prices.

...and Ms. Phuong Hien's "everyone loves" squash

A hundred things to worry about

Who doesn’t love to see a lush green garden? But to achieve such results, it takes days of learning, research, and even a lot of effort. Most Vietnamese people in the West start gardening from scratch, and it’s a big challenge because the climate and soil conditions are different from their homeland.

"Summer in Europe is very short, so if you plant in the wrong season, you will lose everything and have to wait for the next season," Thien Y explained. Not to mention that there are years when the weather is erratic, until mid-May it is still cold and the plants cannot grow.

Ms. Thoa Hoang in Haute Savoie - France said: "There are only a few warm months a year. If the warm months are late, the plants won't have time to grow before the weather turns cold again, so all the effort is wasted."

To get ahead of the weather, in April, when the weather is less cold, places in the house with lots of light are used to sow seeds and grow plants. On warm sunny days, they are brought outside, on cold rainy days and at night, they are kept inside, and so on until the seedlings can be planted in the garden.

After the ground is buried, there is the battle against insects. Just imagine the scene of crying in the morning when the young plant bed has no stems left overnight. Snails are the "mortal enemy" because they eat all the young shoots on their way, then insects attack the young buds, making the tree unable to flower and bear fruit and gradually die.

Thien Y's basket of hometown vegetables (Photo provided by the character)

"Vietnamese standard" herbs

Gardeners are always having a headache trying to find ways to kill harmful insects without affecting the quality of vegetables and fruits. Although there are many kinds of biological products on the market, the prices are quite high and the effectiveness is only modest.

So the topic of pest control on forums is always hot with environmentally friendly initiatives. Garlic, chili, strong alcohol, vinegar... are all used.

As for the snails, every night, especially after the rain, the women would search for them all, throw them far away so they couldn't see their way home, and then go to sleep peacefully. Phuong Hien also built an elaborate "fortress" to prevent snails from approaching the vegetable beds: the outer ring was a series of snail-repellent plants, followed by hard-bristled brooms, and the inner ring was covered with eggshells on the ground - all to prevent snails from crawling over.

There is also a funny story that people who buy plants or seeds on online forums often encounter: They spend a lot of time and effort growing the plants, only to find out when the plants grow that they are not the type of fruit or vegetable they wanted.

The reason is that both sellers and buyers do not have experience in identifying trees while the source of seedlings is taken from many places with annotations in all languages, even Google translate is useless.

All the hard work has been rewarded

When the weather is good, Vietnamese vegetable and fruit gardens in Europe grow beyond expectations. Phuong Hien boasts of growing squash weighing more than 4 kg, chilies that produce so much fruit that they can't be eaten all at once, so they are soaked in vinegar to eat gradually, and vegetables that can't be frozen are given to neighbors and friends.

Although not familiar with Vietnamese squash, pumpkin, squash, bitter melon, Phuong Hien's husband's family especially likes herbs. "White basil, which is used to cook hot pot and sour soup, they put it in cold water to drink, saying it has a pleasant smell. As for the cold lemongrass juice I made, my husband's family was ecstatic!" - Hien happily showed off her achievements.

As for Thien Y, the joy is seeing the whole family excited about the delicious, clean vegetables available in the garden and the flavorful Vietnamese meals, enriching the menu alongside Western dishes.

Source