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BY IRENE VAN SLYKEWe are in the midst of a zucchini crisis. At least that is what newspapers and magazines would have us believe. A whole page was devoted to zucchini recipes in the New York %u201cTimes,%u201d while %u201c The Zucchini that ate Chicago\Voice%u201d and advertisements for zucchini cookbooks abound in %u201c The New Yorker.%u201d With vegetables sprouting up everywhere in Brooklyn, zucchini, an easy crop to grow is becoming an increasingly popular vegetable here, too.Ramon Birriel, a Boerum Hill resident and one of my neighbors, complains that he is afraid that the next time he gets a cup of coffee his wife will serve it with zucchini. It%u2019s a vegetable his wife loves and he detests.For years, the 200 Bergen Street Community Garden lot, where Ramon and Rosa Birriel now tend their vegetables, was used for parking. When the block association wanted to turn it into a garden Ramon, who owns a house next to the lot, didn%u2019t think that it was a good idea%u2014in fact, he didn%u2019t think it would work. Several other neighbors objected that the safety of their backyards would be at stake with all kinds of people working in a garden.But danger was hardly imminent. The association moved slowiy, with lengthy discussions at monthly meetings about fountains, lanterns, benches and other exotica, all part of a $100,000 plan.In the end, we settled for some top soil from Congressman Richmond%u2019s office and free seeds and tools from the Cooperative Extension office of Cornell University%u2014 after we had spent all the Association%u2019s money, about $1,000, on a 10-foot high wooden fence. (If nothing else, the garden will be safe and it will look nice.)GREW ON THEMRamon and Rosa Birriel agreed to water the garden and as time went on, the vegetables started to grow and the garden grew on them. Rosa grew all kinds of beans I had never heard of%u2014and certainly never . I, in turn, grew zucchini%u2014something she had never seen or eaten. We exchanged crops and because this year%u2019s harvest produced a bumper crop of zucchini, Ramon and Rosa Burriel learned to eat zucchini. (By the way, very few people from the block association work in the garden; Ramon and Rosa have become the backbone of the plot!)Learning to eat new foods is part of the fun of growing vegetables. Jose Suarez from Park Slope worked a little plot at Baltic Street and Fourth Avenue last year. This year, he is showing 18 Youth Corps teenagers at Hattie Carthan%u2019s Magnolia Tree Earth Center in Bedford-Stuyvesant how to grow vegetables. %u201cThe kids suggest the kind of vegetables to grow, like kale and corn, collard greens and zucchini,%u201d Suarez says, adding, perhaps inevitably, %u201c I didn%u2019t know what zucchini was, but I tasted it and it%u2019sall right.%u201dSuarez explained that some of the kids had never seen vegetables with dirt on themsick. %u201c You know,%u201d says Suarez, %u201c the first time we had a crop, the kids said: You can%u2019t eat that, it%u2019s dirty. So I cleaned the dirt off with water. Then I ate some first, to show them that it is ok. They just weren%u2019t familiar( .w ttn u ed on P ag e ' 1August 3,1978, TH E PHOENIX, Page 9