7-24-06 Summer's Sweet Harvest In This Issue: Home New Home Gardenerd Product of the Month: Gardenerd Tip of the Month: Tomato Time! 1. Home New Home Well slap my fanny…
It’s magical to come home after a vacation to find that the garden has not taken any time off. We get used to looking at our gardens everyday,
so we don’t notice the changes as much as when we take a break and return to find a bumper crop waiting to be harvested.
That’s exactly what happened last month when we took a trip to Europe. We came home to beets, kale, lettuces, Swiss chard and more. In …
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 …
As you pull out your tomato plants this fall, check the roots for galls. These are lumpy swellings that indicate that you might have nematodes living in your soil that are stunting the tomato plant’s
growth. (You can learn more about it from our Got Nematodes podcast)
We had that problem last year so we planted Golden Guardian Marigolds, the roots of which contain a toxin that kills harmful nematodes. Now it’s time to harvest the seeds and turn the crop under so
it can do its job.
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A question came into Ask Gardenerd this week that I’ve been hearing for the past month or so. Seems like a good time to address it:
“When do you know when to pull out things that grow underground like radishes, green onions, even carrots? I’m either too early or too late. – Rochelle”
Well Rochelle, the answer is in your hands. More specifically, it’s your index finger. When growing root crops, the foliage will put on a pretty show above ground, but the real magic is
happening underground. In order …
August means harvest time, and even in a small garden there’s plenty of work to do to bring garden treasures in for the season. Harvesting grains can be a bit time consuming, but it is particularly
satisfying when the process is over. After all the chaff is removed, you have a finished product that can be used to make cereals, breads, pie crusts, and other baked goods through winter.
We grew triticale this spring and just harvested it this week. Now it’s time
to prepare it for the …
Since we planted squash very early this year (in order to get the plants established by the time June Gloom set in) we are already set to harvest some of our winter squash. Our Golden Pippin Acorn
squash and most of our Delicata squash plants have withered, leaving behind golden fruits that will store through winter.
With pumpkins, it’s easy to know when to harvest – just let the vines turn brown and crispy, then pick your pumpkin. Not all winter squash is that simple. For example, I’ve …
There is only so much room in the refrigerator, and Swiss Chard can take up a lot of that precious space. Those bright colorful stems usually have to “go away” in order to fit a batch of chard into
the vegetable drawer (which is fine with me, since I don’t care for the stems anyway). I recently found a recipe that uses up all that chard in a tasty pie that lasts for a few meals.
Whether you hate or love Martha Stewart, you have to admit that her empire comes up with …