What to Plant with Onions
Tuck green onions in between other crops, grow shallots next to your chard.
Jade is hard to kill.
Ask Gardenerd: Winter Care for Succulents
This week's question is a good one: "Hi and thank you in advance for your help. I live in Texas and have a lot of succulents in pots (20) and other things in the ground like cannas. Question is: how to keep them alive through winter? Get some kind of tarps or bring them into the house or invest in a small greenhouse if so what kind? Thanks!!" Winter in Texas can be brutal, and like many places, you may…
All-blue, russet and red potatoes are jewels from the garden.
The Martian and His Potatoes…and Mistakes
Everyone, I mean everyone told me, "You must see The Martian. He grows potatoes on Mars." So I went. It was well done, except for a couple things: 1) No one could possibly stay that positive in those circumstances, and 2) His potato-growing experiment most assuredly would have failed. Walking out of the theater, my husband asked how accurate the potato farming was. After counting on my fingers the errors made, his first words were, "They should've asked you." Let's…
Plant Native Plants Now
Plant native plants now for them to flourish in the Spring
Artichoke hearts sold fresh, floating in water.
Field Trip: More Italy!
There's nothing quite so exotic as a farmers market in a foreign country. You get to see the staples of the local diet on display. Here in the US, we see peppers and eggplant and tomatoes just like in Italy, but the varieties are different and there's so much more. Radicchio, fennel, porcini mushrooms and chestnuts are readily available at Italian farmers markets right now. Just remember, the rules there are different: don't touch the produce, tell the vendor what…
Once those eggs hatch, the worm grows from tiny (above) to fat and juicy. They'll destroy your plants in a day.
Fall Planting is Here!
It's still hot here in Los Angeles, but there have been a few cooler days that we took advantage of to plant out our fall brassicas. If you're ready for fall planting, now is a good time. Seeds will germinate more quickly in warmer weather (if you keep the seed bed moist) and you'll be picking salad greens in no time. Here's what's growin' on right now in our Test Garden. Potatoes, onions, brassicas, spinach, celery and more: Seedlings grown…
Harvesting Sweet Potatoes
Learn how to roast and prepare squashes this fall
Salad Leaf Basil
Recipe: Almond or Hemp Seed Pesto (Vegan)
It's wonderful to return from Italy to find the garden bursting with basil. This is cause for celebration! It's time to make more pesto to freeze for later use. Since one does not return from Italy thinner than one was before one left, we opted to make a vegan version of pesto using almonds or hemp seeds as the "cheese." We found a recipe from the Cafe Gratitude cookbook and whipped up a few batches. It's pretty easy, all you…
Fresh olives ready to be picked next week.
Field Trip: Villa Vignamaggio, Italy
We took a little break from gardening here in the states to visit the Chianti region in Italy for a friend's wedding last week. Little did we know we would be staying in a magnificent villa complete with organic vegetable garden. Meet Villa Vignamaggio. Villa Vignamaggio is everything a hopeless romantic could wish for: stately mansion, spectacular hilltop views, olive trees and grape vines everywhere, manicured gardens suitable for royalty. But while everyone else was busy fawning over all that…
Some home grown, some pilfered. All beautiful.
Wordless Wednesday: Harvest 2015
These are never really wordless, but you get the idea. Today is a celebration of a season passing, and a season's passion. Harvest time is satisfying, beautiful and temporary. Next we start fall crops. Here is a little of both. And what's next? Fall! What are you pulling from your garden these days? Post your haul / stash / treasures here.