Review: Do You Need A Joey Apron?
How many times have you gone out to pick "just a couple things" and returned to the kitchen with an armload of produce spilling onto the floor?
Some were large like this one.
Harvesting Jerusalem Artichokes
It's been 9 months since we planted the three Jerusalem Artichokes that had sprouted in the fridge. Now the plant has dried up and it's time to harvest. Most guide books tell you not to harvest until after frost, but here in Southern California things are different (heck, we planted in December, so that should tell you something). The flowers on our massive sunchoke stalk are long gone and the leaves and stems are crispy brown. The biodegradable pot has…
Tiny tomatillo-like fruits are oddly sweet and savory at the same time.
Growing and Harvesting Ground Cherries
It's always great to discover you can grow something in your climate that you didn't think was possible before. This is true of ground cherries for me. Until this spring, they were a mystery to me, relegated to northern climates, or so I thought. Then a friend sent seeds from Canada and I couldn't resist the opportunity to see how they would do in a completely different latitude. Ground cherries, otherwise known as Physalis, are in the nightshade family and…
Harvesting basil is easy if you know where to look.
Harvesting Basil
Every once in a while it's time to return to basics here at Gardenerd. Our blog is filled with helpful hints for gardening, but we recently discovered that the basics for harvesting basil were not among those hints. So here they are. Basil is a fragrant staple of the spring and summer garden. There are dozens of varieties to grow, but they all behave the same (at least all the annual varieties do). Basil is a member of the mint…
Fresh sage is fragrant and adds earthy flavor to fall and winter dishes.
Harvesting Sage
I have a confession to make. I've never really been able to keep culinary sage alive, even though it's a perennial. Therefore I've had very little experience with harvesting sage, aside from picking individual leaves, because it usually dies in the first year. Today, that all changes. With enough water and attention I've managed to keep my "drought tolerant" sage alive to the point that it is now thriving and ready for harvest. Not just leaves, actual stems. How-to: To get…
Harvesting Honey Like the Pros
Late summer/early fall was the perfect time for harvesting honey, and while we've done it in the past on a small scale, our latest harvest required the right equipment to handle a larger batch. We looked to our friends at HoneyLove.org to help. As members of HoneyLove, we can check out community equipment instead of buying and storing bulky buckets ourselves. Believe me, this is the way to go. The harvest was light, since it was the first year, but…
YouTube: Harvesting Compost
We've been busy making instructional videos, and the latest one is all about harvesting compost. Here you'll learn simple tricks and tools to get your compost from the bin to the garden bed in an efficient way. We've event added a few tips on what to do with the grubs you find in there, and a bit about compostable cutlery. As you probably know, compost is the most important ingredient in a healthy garden. You'll enrich your soil and enhance…
Finished honey ready for eating
First Honey Harvest – Part 2
A few weeks ago, we harvested a frame of honeycomb from our bee hive. We've enjoyed eating thin slices of comb and chewing on it to extract the honey. What you're left with is like chewing gum, but in this case you can either spit it out or swallow it (it's technically a fat, not a wax, so it's safe to ingest). Regardless of whether that grosses you out or not, it's a fascinating experience. Still, we wanted honey to…
After Vacation Harvesting 2011…and meal ideas
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 ...