Extending Tomato Season
Now that it's fall, tomatoes are heading out, but you can extend the season and protect your tomatoes at the same time with this week's tip.
Growing Garbanzo Beans (that’s chickpeas to you, darling)
You'll find them in Indian food, hearty soups, and as a ubiquitous staple of the salad bar at Soup Plantation, but you might not know how good they really are until you've cooked them yourself. Garbanzo beans, also known as chick peas, are usually undercooked when you buy them canned, and certainly don't hold a lot of flavor on their own (kind of like tofu), but they are a great base for many dishes and very satisfying to grow.
We experimented with growing garbanzo beans in our test ...
Building a Solar Food Dryer
Okay, so you've got a ton of leeks and you've already made a gigantic batch of potato and leek soup that's completely filled up the freezer. Now what do you do with the rest of the leeks (about 10 pounds or so)? One options is to dehydrate them. Dried fruits and vegetables require no freezer space, no refrigerator space, and no electricity to keep them at the ready for use in the kitchen. In fact, it ...
Fresh Melon off the Vine
Choosing a ripe melon can be an art. Find out how to know when they're ripe in your garden.
The Green of Mexico
We recently took some time off this summer to vacation in Michoacan, Mexico. The goal was to relax deeply and to see what the areas of indigenous Mexico had to offer. We were enveloped by the beauty of the land during this rainy season, and felt like we saw the real Mexico, rather than the tourist versions.
Our home base was in Lake Zirahuen, a small town around one of the purest lakes in the world. It rained ...
Compost Queries
A question came in this week from a Gardenerd student:
"I'm sharing a Biostack [compost] bin with my neighbors in my apt complex and the question was raised on whether or not it's acceptable to put whole fruit, apples, oranges, etc. into the bin. I'm trying to keep the bin simple for people so I am hesitant to tell people to cut up their fruit to help accelerate the composting, but my neighbor thinks they should be. Can you tell me what the ...
Pure Joy in the Garden
Recently I finished teaching another round of classes at Santa Monica College's Continuing Education Program, during which the students planted a few seeds in plastic pots to take home with them. They planted either carrots, green onions or radishes (small plants that would do well in 6" pots). They eagerly awaited for the first signs of sprouting and enthusiastically reported back in the third or fourth week of class, "I have carrot sprouts!" I love seeing ...
Growing Quinoa – A Complete Protein
This is my second year growing quinoa, and it occurred to me that I hadn't documented the process yet. So - without further delay...
How to grow quinoa:
The first thing you need to know is that while quinoa seed heads are covered in saponin (a natural soap that keeps birds from eating them), the seeds that you plant are somehow going to be completely appetizing to birds in ...
Get in Bed with your Compost
Sometimes you have to think inside the box to think outside the box. This week's tip sheds new light on a different way to compost.
Harvesting Pop Corn
One of the great delights about gardening is growing something for the first time. Each season, we plant new varieties or a veggie we've never grown before to see what it's like. In our test garden so far, we've planted and enjoyed asparagus (3 years ago), brown mustard seeds , quinoa (details forthcoming), garbanzo beans (stayed for a blog on that) and popping ...