These Dog Days of summer are challenging. It's too hot to plant or work in the garden, but garden is starting to look ragged as plants near the end of their life cycle. What to do? It's time for a little clean up. Summer pruning helps in so many ways. It clears away dead or diseased plant material. It keeps home-orchard fruit trees in check. It refreshes the garden with a snip or two, here and there. Best of all,…
It's hot, and nobody wants to turn on the oven. This is the time for a magical, outdoor, sunset-lit summer garden party. These parties are the stuff of summer. How many childhood memories do we all have from outdoor summer gatherings. We caught fireflies in Mason jars on hot August nights in upstate New York. We watched the sun set over the Pacific ocean and gathered under 100 year old trees at long tables in Malibu. Barbecues take center stage,…
Water, water, everywhere...well, not so much anymore. States like California and Texas are suffering severe drought conditions and gardeners are rising to the occasion by swapping out thirsty lawns for drought tolerant plant material. A new phrase, "drought shaming" is making the rounds--ratting on neighbors who water between 9 a.m. and 4 p.m., let their irrigation run down the sidewalk, or wash their cars in the street or driveway. I fully admit I'm one of those tattlers. I've got the…
Carrots are fun to grow at home and if you're lucky, some of them will bolt to seed at the end of the season. Then, if you grew an heirloom or open pollinated variety, you can save those carrot seeds. Saving carrot seeds is considered a job for more advanced gardeners, because the threat of cross pollination is high. Short growing seasons also complicate things (you may need to harvest roots in fall for replanting in spring in order to…
When I saw that Smitten Kitchen recreated the ratatouille recipe from Pixar's animated film of the same name, I couldn't resist making it. But there's one caveat: I don't care for peppers, which traditionally show up in this dish. So I changed it up a bit, substituted tomatoes for peppers and Voila! (or rather, Eccola!) it's now an Italian recipe. Now, if you're a Francophile, don't hate me. I've actually eaten ratatouille in a restaurant that was made with tomatoes…
They're everywhere! Tiny, annoying fruit flies, that is. They're trying to get into our tomatoes, peaches, nectarines, and plums. They're even breeding in our compost bucket. What to do? Break out the big guns. The lowly fruit fly has a very short reproductive cycle. The female Drosophila melanogaster (common fruit or vinegar fly) lays eggs about 5 at a time, which hatch and become adults in 4-19 days depending on the ambient temperature. Adults can live for up to 3…
Italians believe that San Marzano tomatoes are the only tomatoes for making sauce. I'm Italian, and I've made sauce with just about any tomato I can get my hands on, but this year we grew San Marzano tomatoes for the first time. So there will be sauce. I grew up watching my mother make my grandmother's recipe for tomato sauce. It took no less than 3-5 hours. She often used canned tomatoes, one of the few canned products we bought.…
Onions take a long time to grow, but when it comes time for harvesting onions, it's incredibly satisfying, and worth the wait. Here in Southern California we plant onions by seed in the fall, or by "sets" in spring. By the middle of summer, those sets and seeds have turned into full-blown onions that actually resemble something you'd buy in the supermarket. It's amazing! In late March, someone gifted us with their leftover onion sets. These are not the tiny…
It's harvest time for tomatoes, whether they be determinate or indeterminate. These orbs of delight are the quintessential summer fruit and we're picking them daily. We planted early this year (quite possibly a mistake since we now have blight...but then again, we get blight every year, so I give up). We grew 18 different varieties this year, all heirlooms, all gorgeous. Here's a little tomato parade for 2014: Our first time growing these successfully. Can't wait to make sauce. Jaune…
This spring we experimented with growing heirloom Black Dakota popping corn. It's a beautiful, deep red, pointy popping corn that pops white. We couldn't resist the opportunity to plant this ancestral corn and load up on one of our favorite snacks. Growing popcorn is easy because you don't have to time it out to pick it during the milk stage. You just grow it and let it dry on the stalk. That's it. To learn more details about growing popcorn…