What’s Growin’ On

The latest post from Mar Vista's Bounty Hunter is available for viewing. Find out more about a great new farmstead cheese maker who's living the dream.

The Dairy Goddess Comes to Mar Vista
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There's something romantic about Romano beans. Maybe it's the history, being associated with Italy, or maybe it's the fantasy of standing on a terrace with a platter of grapes and Parmigiano-Reggiano, overlooking a Tuscan vineyard.  

Romano beans are typically grown to be eaten fresh, as a flat bean. If picked when tender, they snap and add sweetness to classic dishes like braised beans and cool, summer salads.


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The 2012 Summer Olympics, with all of its pageantry and intense competition, runs the gamut featuring "26 sports and a total of 39 disciplines," according to Wikipedia. But we feel that the Olympic Committee has left a few important garden-related sporting events out of the competition this year. Perhaps  we'll see one of these Top 5 Gardening Events at the Olympics next time in Rio:

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Mark Rainville is back to finish his series on making bokashi. In today's post, find out how to use this great fertilizer/compost to grow a thriving garden. Back to you, Mark...

In the previous two posts we discussed the history behind bokashi, described a basic definition, and explained the process of mixing bokashi bran. In this post we will ...

A new client called to inquire about putting in a vegetable garden for her 2 1/2 year old son, who suffers from food allergies. She and her husband wanted to start growing the vegetables that he could eat and teach him where food comes from.

Their modern home, designed and built by Jesse Bornstein Architecture, lent itself to clean lines and angles. As always, we wanted to design the garden to tie in with the ...

Most gardeners are lucky if their kale plants last through the summer. We've been blessed with a Lacinato kale that has been growing for over a year and a half. It's a magic plant; it survived cut worms, it resisted powdery mildew, and it never, ever got aphids. We're definitely saving seeds from this plant.

Now over 10 feet tall, and listing to one side, the time has come to pull the plant (before it decapitates someone when it falls). ...

Every once in a while, you just need pretty pictures to look at. With hot weather descending upon us, the garden is really taking off (oh-so-happy peppers and melons!), so we're happy to oblige with some shots of the Gardenerd Test Garden in mid-summer.

Enjoy!

Black Cherry tomatoes beginning to turn colors

Ancho/Poblano peppers finally flowering in hot weather

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The ever-versatile cucumber isn't held in high esteem here at Gardenerd (much like bell peppers, its flavor takes over everything it touches), but we've come to love them--and grow them--for the express purpose of making spa water or pickles, or perhaps they find their way into a nori roll or Tadzhik. Over the years we've grown several heirloom varieties, but our ...

Strawberries are in season and the garden is dripping with them. We took the opportunity to use the harvest to make a delicious cobbler that was easy to assemble in under 10 minutes.

The recipe comes from Vegetarian Times magazine, and use non-hydrogenated vegetable shortening in order to make it vegan. We used butter instead, since I had it on hand.

Strawberry harvest

In spring, we experimented with planting edamame (soybeans) and, despite having to re-seed 3 times (with only 7 out of 20 seeds surviving in the end), the plants have yielded excellent results. Today we began harvesting the plump pods.

We've grown edamame from seedlings once before, but never from seed. Trial, and plenty of error, lead us to discover that soaking the seeds before planting is a bad idea when it comes to Sayamusume soybeans. We did inoculate ...