YouTube: Harvest Potatoes from Less Space – Part 2
In Part 1 of Grow Potatoes from Less Space, we showed you how to plant potatoes in a vertical garden. This video is all about harvesting!
YouTube: How To Harvest Potatoes In Raised Beds
Our latest YouTube video shows you how to harvest potatoes in raised beds. It also walks you through the process of curing them for storage, so they'll last longer.
Dazzling Blue Kale, the best of both worlds.
Recipes for Fall Crops
As we start harvesting kale, bok choy, lettuces, Swiss chard, and radishes from the fall garden, it's time to find recipes for these gems. Got a lot of mustard greens? We've got recipes for you. Check out these tasty dishes that don't take a grand plan to execute. Kale Warm dinners are in store when kale is in the garden. This recipe for One Pot Kale and Quinoa Pilaf is on our list to try as the weather cools down.…
Green bean overload. We filled a 1 gallon bucket from our 4 square foot patch of bush beans when we got home.
What to do with Overgrown Green Beans
It happens to even the most savvy gardener. You go out of town on vacation and when you return, there are beans...lots of beans. Not just any beans, overripe beans. Tough, fibrous, partially mature beans that are still green. What to do? We're exploring the possibilities. When are green beans overripe? It's pretty easy to tell when green beans have gone too far. You can see the outline of individual seeds bulging inside the pod. The pods themselves will be…
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.
Rosalind broccoli ready to harvest
When to Harvest Broccoli?
I get this question all the time: how do you know when broccoli is ready to harvest? The answer is in your fingertips. You can tell when to harvest broccoli by touching the head, or bud (that's what broccoli is, a cluster of flower buds), and squeezing. If the head is firm and tight, and about the diameter that is expected for the variety you've grown, it's ready to pick. If the head gives when you squeeze it, or there…
Nature gives us answers if you know where to look.
Harvesting Onions
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…
First time growing this heirloom squash
Summer Garden Virtual Tour
Our summer garden is growing strong, and since we've posted about new varieties and projects earlier in the season, I thought I'd post an update to share how things are going. We've seen successes and failures this year, but that hasn't stopped us from harvesting the bounty this summer. Take a look: Sure we have leaf miners and powdery mildew, but the Lakota squash is still beautiful and interesting in a summer garden. Our Poona Kheera cucumbers developed this amazing…
Finished product - shelf stable green onions
Preserving Green Onions
No matter how we try to use up green onions from the garden, we always end up either with too many in the fridge or overgrown, leek-sized onions taking up space in the garden. This week we did something about it. Now that the days are longer, we hauled out our trusty solar food dryer to put it to work for the season. In addition to making delicious flax chips again, we've christened the solar dryer this year with our…
Photos by Andrew Cheeseman
Oh Sweet Goodness: First Honey Harvest
We couldn't stand the suspense any longer. Our bees were filling up frame after frame of their hive with golden nectar and we wanted to share the experience. So we donned our suits and veils and harvested a single frame for ourselves. Oh, sweet goodness! The frame was heavy with precious cargo, with each hexagonal cell covered in wax capping to let us know that it's ready. Open cells of comb are not ready; bees wait until the moisture content…