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Harvesting Watermelons

Just in the nick of time, our watermelons are ready to harvest before summer ends. How do you know they’re ready? Consider this post to be a companion piece to our watermelon Tip of the Week Podcast, visual aid style, that illustrates the tell-tale sign that watermelon is
ready for harvest.

There are old wives tales about the sound that watermelons are supposed to make when ripe. You can also look at the underside of the melon to check whether …

Tomato Tasting Party – Everybody Wins!

We have a tradition with a longtime friend in which we gather together, bringing our best tomatoes each season, to share in the bounty of the summer harvest. We slice them with care and taste each
variety to determine our favorites. There is olive oil and salt, a little basil, and very good bread on hand. Each time we’ve done a tasting we have come away with a new favorite. This year was no
exception.

We gathered in the garden with our contributions and began with show and tell. My husband and …

Italy Travelogue: Umbria’s Beauty and Hotel Montali

I’ve just returned from 12 days in Italy filled with gelato, pasta, cheese and beautiful countryside. May is a wonderful time to be there – just before the stifling heat, but just after
gardens have been planted. If there’s one thing you see a lot of in Italy, it’s front yard gardens. They are not obsessed with the idea of a grassy front lawn like we Americans. They use their land
to grow food – lots of food.

Driving through the green rolling hills of Umbria, we saw small Medieval towns dotting the …

Lima Bean, Barley and Vegetable Soup

With all the talk of winter storms and canceled flights, it’s clear that comfort food is in order. As a blanket apology from Southern California and our lovely weather, I offer this warming recipe to
those in icy places across the country.

It starts with baby lima beans, but we used Christmas Lima Beans that we grew this past summer:

It also calls for pearl barley, but we didn’t have any on hand, so we used brown rice, since they cook in …

Kidney Bean Bonanza

With cool weather upon us, it’s time for soups and stews. What better way to showcase the often-neglected kidney bean (it’s not just for the salad bar) than to highlight some of our favorite dishes
made with this crimson legume?

I’ll confess, I didn’t grow kidney beans this summer, but I will someday. In the meanwhile, we buy them dry and soak them overnight to make great meals. We cook them for about 15 minutes in a
pressure cooker and voila! Perfect beans.

Cooked …

The New 2011 Spring/Summer Organic Seed Collection

This being the beginning of the holiday season, and the first day of Hanukkah, it felt only fitting to unveil the all-new 2011 Spring/Summer Organic Seed Collection from the
Gardenerd Store. Read about the great choices for your spring garden (makes a great gift or stocking stuffer!) and see why we chose them for your garden.

Who needs gold coins when you can have gardener’s gold like this instead:

All photos
courtesy of Seeds …

Kohlrabi – the Alien Vegetable

As most brassicas go, broccoli is pretty attractive, and cabbage conjures comforting thoughts of Irish stews and Asian stir-fry dishes. There’s one brassica, however, that
makes people double-take when they see it on the shelves of the produce aisle: kohlrabi.

Kohlrabi looks something like a broccoli stem that had its molecules reorganized in the transporter (sorry, couldn’t avoid the Trekkie reference). It has leaves like broccoli, but instead of the
long stalk, it has a bulb at the base of …

Meet the 2010 Spring/Summer Organic Seed Collection

It’s coming upon that time of year when all the 2010 seed catalogs begin to show up in the mail. It is my opinion that seed catalogs are best reviewed in the
comfort of one’s own bed, with plenty of pillows around to prop them all open to one’s favorite pages.

It can be overwhelming. So many different seeds to choose from, so many questions about what might grow well in your hardiness zone. Well, over the years, we’ve …