Meet Erik Knutzen and Kelly Coyne, the Root Simple Team. They have spent years designing a homesteading lifestyle for themselves that is enviable among gardenerds. In the heart of Los…
A fellow gardenerd up in Canada has a new podcast (okay, not so new. He's got 20 episodes already) called Back to My Garden. Dave Ledoux grows in northern climates,…
We've posted a new YouTube video about harvesting and storing leeks for winter. You'll find a neat trick for keeping leeks on hand all winter long. Learn the best way…
And now for a moment of shameless self-promotion... For those who missed it, I was a guest on 89.9 KCRW's Good Food with Evan Kleiman on June 1, 2013. It…
Let's talk about heirloom varieties for your fall garden. Here are our favorites we'd like to share.
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 ...
After last week's Tip of the Week on beets, it got me thinking about red velvet cake. Where did it come from? How was it made before the introduction of Red #40? A quick search revealed that prior to the availability of more alkaline "Dutch processed cocoa", bakers could count on the reaction between cocoa and acidic ingredients like vinegar or buttermilk to create a red tinge to the ...
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.
...
Last week's Tip of the Week podcast introduced you to my mother's delicious dill pickle
recipe. This week we tried our hands at making them with home grown Lemon Cucumbers. Tension mounted at the thought of doing it for the first time without Mom there to guide, but a few phone
calls along the way made it easy.
We started with freshly picked Lemon Cucumbers (and an Early Russian straggler). We soaked them over night in cold water.
...