GREENPORT, N. Y., village of Suffolk County, on the eastern end of Long Island, on the Long Island Railroad, 90 miles east of Brooklyn. It has an excellent harbor and ship yards, and the chief industries are fishing and shipbuilding. It is also a popular summer resort. The Eastern Long Island Hospital is situated here and there is a high school. It was first settled in 1831 and was incorporated in 1868. The water plant and lighting works are municipally owned. Pop. 3,089.
GREENS, Any plant whose foliage and succulent stems are prepared for the table by boiling. The former term is less applied to the plants themselves than to the dish prepared from them; the latter is often applied to the living plants, but rarely to the culinary preparation. Greens are eminently a spring dish; by proper management they may be ob tained long before spring-sown vegetables grow from seed planted out of doors, thus arriving at a time when the appetite is jaded with the usual winter vegetables. Comparatively few (for ex ample, basella and New Zealand spinach) are useful during the hot summer months, but then other vegetables and many fruits take their place. Some (for example, mustard, witloof) are obtainable in the autumn, and a few (kale, endive) even during winter.
In general these plants should all be grown upon rich, moist, well-drained, friable, loamy soil, since upon such they grow quickly, to a large size, and remain succulent and edible longer than upon poorer or drier soils. A soil containing abundant available nitrogenous plant food is particularly desirable. The ground should be thoroughly prepared by deep plowing or digging surface made as fine as pos sible by harrowing or raking. For earliest crops of such hardy plants as spinach and corn salad, the seed may be sown in autumn, and, where the winters are severe, and especially if snowless, protected with a mulch of marsh hay or other material free from weed seeds. They may also be sown as early in the spring as the ground can be worked. Tender plants such as basella, and those that require a high temperature for the germination of their seeds, for instance, purslane, should be sown only after the ground becomes warm. Beyond keeping the surface of
the soil loose and free from weeds, the crops need practically no further care. To be best appreciated, greens should be gathered while very succulent and within as few minutes of meal time as are possible to wash and cook them. Since most of them occupy the ground for only a few weeks in earliest spring, they are usually planted by market gardeners between the rows of other slower growing crops or as precursors to the main crop.
Besides the cultivated pot-herbs (in America a rather small list) there are several scores of plants known most widely as weeds. Several of these are superior in some ways to the culti vated kinds. There is no reason why they should not be cultivated; indeed, they de serve cultivation. When to be grown m the garden and when seed cannot be purchased, seed should be selected from those plants that most nearly meet the intending grower's ideal. Probably the best known and most frequently used weeds or wild plants are the following, several of which are more or less cultivated: Lamb's quarters or Goosefoot (Chenopodium album), Pigweed (Amaranthus, various spe cies), Pokeweed (Phytolacca americana), Marsh marigold, Greens' (Caltha palustris), Mustard (Brassica, various species), Dock (Rumex, various species), Quinoa (Che nopodium quinoa), Sorrel (Oxalis, various spe cies), Purslane (Portulaca oleracea), Plantain (Plantago, various species), Chicory (Cichor sum intybus), Cress (Cardamine, Spilanthes, Barbarea, Senebiera, Gynandropsis, Radicula — various species in each genus), Peppergrass (Lepidium, various species), Mercury or mar (Chenopodium bonus-henricus), Nettle (Urtica, various species), Winter purslane (Montia perfoliata), Rocket salad (Eruca eruca), Salad-burnet (Sanguisorba sanguis orba).
Of the cultivated pot-herbs the following are probably the best known and the most widely cultivated: Spinach, corn salad, chard, borage, dandelion, collards, mustard, kale, orach, marigold, basella, chicory, endive, nasturtium. Unheaded cabbage and cauliflower, young beets and turnips, whole or only the leaves, and rape are frequently used also.