Edible plants Ideas, Tips & Guides

IT IS NEVER TOO EARLY to plant spinach, and in fact I often feel as if I am running behind on that score. Even though there are snow squalls predicted for later this week in my area, it’s time. Last September through Thanksgiving would have been even better.

Everyone usually agrees that tomatillos, garlic, onion, peppers and cilantro are the basic ingredients involved, but do you simmer your tomatillo salsa on the stovetop, or simply pulse-then-blend the raw ingredients together? Perhaps it’s best to roast it in the oven till the whole thing transforms from a thin-into-thickening slurry, and finally to something more like a loose and glistening jam?On the word of my friend You Grow Girl, Gayla Trail, I went with the roasting-pan method.Since I planned to freeze (rather than can) about a dozen small jars, I didn’t have to worry about a perfect balance of acidity, or what other ingredients I added. I simply went by eye, and taste. In my first batch, I was timid about the hot peppers; in my second, I went a little bolder.

IT’S TOO EARLY HERE to start anything for the vegetable garden but leeks and onions, as I mentioned in the March chores, but it’s never too soon to brush up on seed-starting timing and tactics. To that end, a little refresher course:

1. Don’t skip the part about digging the trench, which one Cornell University bulletin describes as a W-furrow (illustrated below). Some people simply dig an 18-inch-wide by 12-inch-deep trench and spread the roots out flat in the bottom. In a W-furrow, a ridge of soil hoed into place down the middle (in this case of a shallower trench, just 6-8 inches deep) supports the spider-like roots.2. Don’t bury the crowns all at once, but rather fill the trench in gradually as the topgrowth develops through the first season.3. Don’t forget to water as the crowns make their way to establishing a deep root system. Details on planting and careare here.Picking4. Don’t pick too soon from a new planting. Some sources say you can pick a little starting one

THAT OLD, DISCARDED ELECTRIC FAN that isn’t strong enough for the hot summers of global warming…hey, bring it on. It’s perfect for accomplishing one of the tricks to growing better tomato seedlings, which is (after all) the only thing you probably really care about on the run-up to another spring. To hell with winter.

I first met Deb Perelman in my former life, when I worked for Martha Stewart. It was late 2007 or early 2008—a millennium ago in internet years—and we’d invited in a group of bloggers we admired to get better acquainted.  Deb sat to my left (and beyond her was Heidi Swanson of 101Cookbooks.com, with the founders of Apartment Therapy and theKitchn.com across the table, and more). I think that gathering is what crystallized my intention to start a website: such an inspiring group.But I digress. If you haven’t visited Smitten Kitchen, prepare to be entertained, educated, and called to action.DEB PERELMAN is a self-taught home cook, and is funny in that self-deprecating way I love (often using the cross-out strikethrough key on her editing dashboard to good effect). On the blog, and in the new cookbook, Deb invites you into her kitchen, and family, teaching you (her Tips section online alone is worth a visit, let alone all her recipes) while tempting you. You always come away hungry…until you get out the ingredients

THIS WEEK I BUILT A GREENHOUSE. Well, to be more correct, Susan (who has worked with me in the garden for many years, for which I am endlessly grateful), built a greenhouse.

Although ‘Sweet 100’ and its later sibling ‘Sweet Million’ probably dominate the cherry-tomato market, even among these little tomatoes there are outstanding alternatives to be had: ‘Chadwick’s Cherry,’ carried as seed or plants by Bountiful Gardens, is an ample, golfball-size with good tomato taste; ‘Sungold’ (shown, next to two red ‘Sweet 100’ fruits) is tangerine-orange and very tasty. Your local nursery should have this.For novelty in a salad tomato, try ‘Black Prince’ (mahogany brown and juicy inside) or pink-fleshed ‘Oxheart’. There are better paste tomatoes than the standard ‘Roma’, too, like ‘Super Italian Paste’ and ‘San Marzano’ (both large-fruited).I have not even scratched the surface, of course. Territorial Seed has more than 80 kinds of tomatoes as plants for mail-order, including many, like ‘Stupice,’ rated especially for their productivity in short growing seasons like mine.I have long used the cages of all cages (and my other tomato advice). [Update: A t

Curly-leaf parsley is great for edging borders, and for planting as a “ruff” around the feet of bigger plants in pots, where it will be beautiful all season, even after substantial frost. But if you want to cook, go ‘Gigante,’ or ‘Giant of Italy.’ Flat-leaf parsley has more parsley flavor, to my taste.All parsley is extremely high in nutrients, particularly Vitamin C, folates and Potassium, as well as beta carotene. In fact, a quarter-cup of raw chopped parsley has about as much C as a quarter-cup of orange juice and double the folates (more that one and a half times those, even, of raw spinach). I include raw leaflets in salads, greatly boosting the nutritional value of

But first, that key reminder: For best flavor and texture, harvest both zucchinis (Cucurbita pepo) and cucumbers (Cucumis sativus) before the skin gets hard and dull, when they still look like the beauties up top. Bitterness from an increase in the chemicals called cucurbitacins that these crops (and melons, pumpkins and gourds) contain may increase with overripeness, though it can also result from environmental stressors such as uneven soil moisture, low soil fertility, low soil pH, high heat or wide swings in temperatures. Once you’ve got such tender subjects in hand, head directly to the kitchen.IAM KNOWN FOR MY PICKLES, and more all the time thanks to search engines and other such decidedly non-culinary efforts. The second-most-popular post I’ve ever published (just an inch behind my slideshow of gorgeous vintage “green” WPA posters from 1936-43, like the one below): the easy refrigerat

Lee’s tips for growing pawpaw or American persimmon couldn’t make it sound more appealing, or simple:“Plant it, water it, and keep weeds and deer away for a couple of years, and then do nothing,” he says. No fancy pruning (like those apples crave), no particular pests–and a big, juicy harvest. More details on how to choose which variety to grow are included in the highlights from the April 29, 2013 edition of my public-radio show and podcast, transcribed below. To hear the entire interview, use the streaming player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).growing ame

Besides leaning how, enter to win the new book plus a chef’s knife and tote bag Alana shared with me to celebrate her book launch, the followup to her previous hit, “The Homemade Pantry” in 2012.One recent weekend, when we were teaching back-to-back, daylong cheesemaking classes at my place, I was explaining to the students how Alana Chernila and I ended up in my kitchen together this way, surrounded by all this milk and cream. After all, I’m a gardener, right, not a dairy farmer?Trying to explain Alana’s and my connection, I asked the class:“You know how my A Way to Ga

I make about eight batches of red sauce late summer until frost, stashing it in the freezer for a year of enjoyment.  It isn’t much prep work, at least not the way I cook. Each “batch” constitutes a spaghetti potful of fresh, raw ingredients before it cooks down to less than half that, enough for 5 or 6 freezer containers of 12-16 ounces each. If you’ve got that last glut of tomatoes in need of processing, or see a bargain bushel of seconds at the farmstand, this lazy-person’s recipe for red sauce might be just the thing.Again, I don’t take the time to peel or seed the tomatoes (to you purists, mea culpa; I’m a whole-food type…and also a bit manic when I cook). The sauce is the tiniest bit more bitter, perhaps, but think of all that fiber (and time saved).Lazy Woman’s Tomato SauceIngredients Enough paste-type or other tomatoes to fill a spaghetti pot 1 head garlic Extra virgin olive oil Fresh basil Fresh parsley, preferably Italian flat-leaf Salt and pepper to taste; small amount of sugar optionalWash tomatoes and cut off stem ends and any blemishes

USE KALE, cabbage or another green if you prefer, to make this Italian-style porridge that’s quick, filling and perfect for those of us who consider such things as soupy polenta to be comfort food—and also love garlic. (Count me in on both scores.) This recipe was inspired by something a friend scribbled down from the old public-television show “Cucina Amore.”Other references call this farinata–the word just translates as porridge or gruel–Farinata di Cavolo Nero (or Farinata with Tuscan Kale). To confuse things, lately the term farinata is often used to refer to a thin, unleavened savory pancake of chickpea flour (also called a socca)…but here we’re in the cornmeal gruel business.ingredients:½ lb. kale or cabbage or mix 6 cups water or vegetable broth (if the broth is salted, or you like a lot of Parmesan, adjust salt below) 1 teaspoon

THE ANNUAL VEGETABLE-GARDEN ARCHAEOLOGICAL DIG yielded the usual suspects—perennials and small shrubs I plunge in there for wintertime storage, things I use in summer pots: huge hosta clumps (I do love hostas) and Hakonechloa and other random bits. In went 3 inches of compost, 10 pounds of lime per 100 square feet, an all-natural organic fertilizer made of meals and manures, seeds for short rows of various salad greens, and a few-dozen onion plants.

THIRTY-SOMETHING YEARS into life as a vegetarian, I have consumed more potatoes than I can even imagine, and eat them several times or more a week. So how to make them different, and special? Memories of a favorite Greek restaurant I frequented decades ago sent me looking for a recipe for patates riganates, roasted potatoes with the flavors of lemon, garlic and oregano. Here’s how I make it, and some variations:

BETWEEN DEEP FREEZES YESTERDAY I grabbed the scissors and a bag and out I went: last call for vegetable-garden snippets. Why leave those final bits of kale and collards, parsley and pak choi–tattered as they may be–to winter’s ravages? Combined with some onions and a winter squash that weren’t storing well in the cellar, among other things, they became stock.

Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, total $15 including shipping‘Blue Lake Bush’ bean ‘Blue Hubbard’ winter squash ‘North Georgie Candy Roaster’ winter squash ‘Jumbo Pink Banana’ winter squash ‘Sweet Dumpling’ winter squash Another confession: After I posted the previous details of the order, I suddenly felt embarrassed. And then I did the math.As I mentioned in the earlier post’s comments, I haven’t bought any tomato sauce or canned tomatoes in years, for instance. Last time I looked, the organic ones are not cheap, and I use red sauce or something made with it once a week or more. If I credit myself $2 for each container of frozen or jarred meals I created from my 2009 garden produce–just $2, e

“It’s like sheet mulching or lasagna gardening,” says Dave Whitinger of the National Gardening Association, who regularly lectures on the subject, but in hugelkultur, “wood is the first level of your sheet-mulched bed.” That’s his robust hugelkultur onion bed up top.Read along as you listen to the April 22, 2013 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes or Spotify or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).my hugelkultur q&a with dave whitingerFOR DAVE (above), the idea of this style of recycling came from a w

Out of the 41 total items I purchased from four companies, 9 were not seeds at all: 2 were “hardware” or equipment (row covers and hoops); 4 were tubers or roots (3 kinds of potatoes and 1 of multiplier onions); 3 others were sweet potato varieties, sold as “slips.”That nets out at 32 seed items, and 12 of those are collaborative—earmarked to share with a gardening friend. Am I cured? Doubtful. Am I a little bit more conscious? Perhaps.Here’s what I’ll be growing in the vegetable garden in 2009, alongside the viable seeds for various lettuces, arugula, spinach, beans, chard and a few stray pumpkins I already have on hand. In reviewing my orders I see one tactical error: I forgot the snap type of peas, specifically my bel

“Gardening Without Work,” Ruth Stout’s wonderful 1961 work, is one of my most treasured vintage gardening books, published when she was 76 years old. Though I am a couple of decades shy, the subtitle running up the right side of the cover cries out: “For the Aging, the Busy & the Indolent.”Guilty on all counts at the moment, Ruth. Mea culpa.It is more the spirit of the book than anything that I love, an attitude brought to life in a series of videos of her that I am thrilled to have just found (ask your library if they have them for rent; one sample is embedded from YouTube farther down this page). Written a year before Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” came out, Stout’s funny

SITTING AT A KITCHEN TABLE with like-minded neighbors in her English hometown several years ago, Pam Warhurst helped found a dynamic greening group called Incredible Edible Todmorden. No board meetings, no surveys or reports first, she says: They did it “without a flippin’ strategy document,” because they thought that creating gardens–especially food gardens–in unused spaces around town, reconnecting citizens to the source of their food as a first step toward sustainability, was very simply a good idea. “We call it propaganda gardening,” she says. Indeed.

THE 2010 SCHEDULE:Each Wednesday for the rest of the summer and probably longer, a group of blogging friends including Todd and Diane at White on Rice Couple; Shauna Ahern the Gluten-Free Girl, and Food2 will swap our recipes and tips about the following harvest-fresh ingredients. You’ll love meeting this year’s participants (a full list with links will accompany my post Wednesday and every week). The schedule:7/28: cukesnzukes 8/4: corn 8/11: herbs, greens, and beans 8/18: stone fruit 8/25 tomatoes more to come if we all want it — stay tuned! We each post something and then link to one another, so that you can travel around the combined effort, gathering the goodies.HOW YOU CAN JOIN IN SUMMER FEST:Giving back

Start with dark green, stout transplants equally high and wide, preferably about 4 inches in each direction.  (My step-by-step for growing your own includes many tricks; you can also shop locally for seedlings or by mail.)Plan to grow a mix of heirlooms and hybrids for a little insurance: Heirlooms are beautiful, delicious and a critical part of our genetic heritage, but sometimes they lack the disease-resistance (often labeled VFN) of hybrids. I like to mix it up.Remember that even with hybrids rated as having VFN resistance, the word “resistance” is the operative phrase.

(They’re also really beautiful, if you look at them up close–but beautiful in the way that Japanese beetles are beautiful, meaning not enough for me to count them as beloved pets and keep them around or anything.) Squish!The cross-striped cabbage worm larvae are sort of blue-gray, and as their name suggests striped across their bodies. Not so many years back, it was more a pest in Southern farms and gardens, but has gradually made its way to southern New England, at least. I read up on them in various places–U-Mass Amherst; at the University of Georgia, and so on–and what I conc

Come spring, several weeks before I plan to plant each area, I’ll cut or mow or pull the grain and legume combination down, depending on which pair I used and where they’re located, then turn under the remains. It’s like composting in place, with the foliage and underlying root system decomposing to improve soil texture and fertility.Cover crops can serve other purposes: Some specialized ones, like various Brassicas, can also provide not just biomass but other benefits including pest and disease control (more on that from Cornell). The subject is much wider than this simple explanation, but stated most simply:Grasses (like rye, sorghum-sudangrass crosses, and wheat) add organic matter to the soil very effectively. Note that I don’t list buckwheat

AS I PLANT MY PARSLEY, PICK ASPARAGUS and get ready for tomato transplant time, it gets me thinking about tomorrow (as in “the offseason”) when my Northern garden doesn’t offer up so much food as it will the next few months. No worry, because I am a hoarder—of fresh garden and farmer’s-market produce (though not on sagging shelves like that 1940 Farm Security Administration slide, above!).

Tom Stearns is founder of High Mowing Organic Seeds in Vermont, with more than 20 years specializing in breeding, selecting and marketing of organic varieties. From microgreens indoors to baby-leaf to mini-heads and up to full-sized heads in the garden, we talked about timing, spacing and making lettuce happy—even which types hold up best in the heat (and ways to help all lettuce do better when summer arrives).Read along as you listen to the Jan. 14, 2019 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes or Stitcher (and browse my archive of podcasts here).success with lettuce, with tom stearnsQ. Over the years on the show you and I have talked about tomato h

To enter to win a copy, simply scroll down to the comments and tell us how you like your spears. Type a whole recipe right into the comment box, or just a link to a recipe on your blog or another’s, or perhaps a tip instead about what you like asparagus served with (Anna says dill and lemon come to mind, for starters).The backstory: I met Anna Thomas when “Love Soup” came out last fall, and promptly stocked my freezer with double batches of several of her recipes made from my winter squash and sweet potatoes and kale and the like, and stocked up on copies to give as holiday gifts. Now a whole new season of homegrown vegetables has begun, and I’m working my way through “Chapter 9: First Tastes of Spring,” and on to “Chapter 10: Green and Greener.” Heaven. Vats of Asparagus Bisque, here I come.Thismust-have cookbook features 160 vegetarian recipes for soups and all the extras, from b

First, the disclaimer: This is only the second batch of curry I have ever made, after a lesson imparted just weeks ago from a friend. I am no expert, but it’s easy, highly adaptable in flavor according to your hand with the spices, and it sure does taste good. If you are a professional chef, please no laughing; I offer this to encourage other curry wannabes to just suspend fear and try a potful as I did.Also please note: What follows is more guide than precise recipe. I cook by feel and taste. The amounts below yield about one-third of an 8-quart stockpot (what I think of as a spaghetti pot) of finished curry, so prep an appropriate amount of vegetables. If you like a finer texture, dice accordingly; I like chunky (and too-fine dices don’t hold up as well after cooking, freezing, a

It should be no surprise to me that it was Dave who created this new online application, since besides his garden expertise, Texas-based Dave is a programmer (and the founder of Dave’s Garden, which he ran before moving on to start All Things Plants). Dave was the guest on this week’s “A Way to Garden” public-radio show and podcast, where we discussed the new Garden Planting Calendar app. (Stream the show now; get it on iTunes, or Stitcher, or at RobinHoodRadio.com.)“My wife, Trish, is actually the one who pushed me to do this,” says Dave, adding that the Garden Planting Calendar took him only two months to develop and launch. It gives you first and last frost dates (where applicable) and sowing and/or planting dates by crop, based on the location you enter.The app started with just U.S. weather data, but Canadian users quickly said, “What about us?” so Dave added that i

Those are my faded little hot chiles (above), in case you think I’m kidding. I’ll replace them with a new shiny red set this fall, promise.STUFFED PEPPERS (with Uncle Ben’s, chop meat, onion, Parmesan) were a staple of growing-up years, baked in Mom’s deep Pyrex casserole dish with V-8 juice as the liquid. So 1960s—and so easy and filling, right? (These days I skip the meat and use brown rice, plus pine nuts, onions and raisins, with my own tomato sauce thinned-down as the juice.)But my go-to pepper dish is appetizer, not main: simple oven-roasted pep

First, a word about Summer Fest, which I co-founded in 2008: It’s a giant round-robin of sharing themed to a single garden-fresh ingredient each week. Get all the details and latest links below, just before the comments, and stock up on delicious ideas from around the web—or add your own.I READ UP ON CREAMED CORN this week (as did many of my Summer Fest colleagues—see the links below), and found a lot of variations included cornstarch or flour as thickeners, sugar, and even Parmesan cheese or bacon or any manner of extras. Once I shucked the fresh-picked corn from down the road, I thought: I can’t do that to this beautiful stuff, and went the ultra-simple route. Even adding cream seemed like gilding the lily. But I did.Corn in Historical ImageryMY VINTAGE PITCHER GOT ME THINKING how much a part of our heritage corn has been,

They never even consider winter crops. A mere dozen lettuce seeds, sown every 10 days from late winter through late summer, the earliest ones indoors for set-out later, will guarantee a small household plenty of fresh, succulent salad greens early spring through late fall. Don’t plant 10 feet of row of lettuce at a time—3 or 4 feet at most is more like it, since lettuce doesn’t keep. And even with those 12 seeds, I like to mix it up a bit, alternating 6 each of two varieties at each planting, so I have a blend of colors, tastes and textures in every bowlful.There are three basic categories of lettuces, the earliest being the looseleaf kind, which take only 45-60 days to mature. ‘Black-Seeded Simpson,’ at 45 days, is about the quickest of all, so don’t be without it. Another non-heading lettuce I always grow is ‘Oakleaf,’ with beautiful ruffled leaves shaped like its namesake’s. There are red forms now, like ‘Flame,’ or various improved v

I don’t even know if this lone pear, with its handsome lichen-covered trunk (background, below), is “wild,” or was planted by a previous owner, as were the remaining half-dozen or so big old apples that have already seen most of a century on this land, a remnant of a long-ago fruit orchard.Each year I’ve just enjoyed the pear for the character-filled tree that it is, and written off the fruit as useless, and a nuisance at that, since much of it drops to the ground and creates an experience not unlike mowing over golfballs (if you don’t slip and fall first after stepping on one).  Birds and other wil

Called “the mystery plant of the herb world” by The Rodale Herb Book, “oregano” is the common name for a small multitude of plants that are mostly useless in the kitchen. Among them are many true oreganos, in the genus Origanum, and also many plants that aren’t. Mexican oregano (Lippia graveolens) is a relative of lemon verbena, not oregano. Cuban oregano (Coleus amboinicus) is a succulent that tastes and smells somewhat like oregano and makes a good houseplant. It is used like oregano in Cuban cuisine. Italian oregano thyme, a member of the genus Thymus, also has the familiar oregano scent.Among the true oreganos there are choices for great beauty, like O. vulgare ‘Aureum,’ a golden-leaved form. (My sorry plant was probably just plain O. vulgare—not even pretty like the golden kind.) Sweet marjoram, a kind of oregano known as O. majorana, is more the stuff of French cuisine, and an excellent culinary herb. Pot marjoram, O. onites, is also savory-flavored.But if you want to cook with the classic oregano taste, you want to try Greek oregano, O. heracleoticum, which is a pungent