Vegetables Ideas, Tips & Guides

Gallione, in his position as Technical Services Technician in the research department at Johnny’s Selected Seeds in Maine, is used to answering gardeners’ questions. I started at the beginning with mine: Why grow crops under cover, anyhow?There are two basic uses for fabric row covers, Paul explained:To modify temperature (for heat retention or frost protection, most early and late in the season with heavyweight fabrics); As a barrier to keep out insects, crows, and chipmunks, to name a few common troublemakers. (Note: You can also create some shade, perhaps for summer salads—t

Win one of three, three-book sets that I’ve purchased to share as prizes—no, not my old food-splattered copies, above, but new ones–the latest edition of each book, promise! All you have to do to enter the random drawing is comment below. All the details are at the end of this post.First, as promised, the resources for canners and would-be canners so you can get started right away stashing those peaches, plums, cukes, tomatoes and more:USDAThe USDA Complete Guide to Home Canning: The tried-and-true resource, revised in 2009. A must destination for all would-be and experienced canners. (You can buy a print copy from the Purdue University online store.)The Extension ServicesMost state Cooperative Extension Services have extensive online resources; your county off

I’m gathering green herbs—parsley, basil, sage, cilantro, chives, you name it—and freezing them in various ways.Have you put your white potatoes into storage? I leave mine in the dark, insulated ground awhile longer, but sooner or later…With sweet potatoes, what to do when it’s time to dig and store.Where to stash onions and garlic (and soon we’ll be planting the latter—along with multiplier onions—so have you ordered your bulbs?).Freeze some peppers while they’re plentiful and cheap.I’m ripening all the tomatoes I can (the tactics, on and off th

No surprise that Corvallis, Oregon-based Peace Seedlings is an offshoot of his work, the undertaking of Alan and Linda Kapuler’s youngest daughter, Dylana, and her partner, Mario DiBenedetto.I got my new-favorite beet, 3 Root Grex, from Peace last season; you might recall my article about that multi-colored wonder. Now

How much dressing-to-greens you like is up to you. Make a cupful and use it through the week, or simply whisk small amounts of the basic ingredients to taste in the bottom of a large-enough-for-tossing bowl, and whisk before adding greens and the rest.for 1 cup of dressinglarge clove of raw garlic, grated (2 teaspoons of grated shallot can be substituted) 1 teaspoon grainy Dijon mustard, or to taste ¼ cup vinegar, a combination of red wine vinegar and balsamic ¾ cup extra virgin olive oil salt and pepper to taste for the saladraw pumpkin seeds raw sunflower seeds crisp, not-too-sweet apple, sliced mixed greens stepsIn a jar or bowl, combine the dressi

It has been a few years since I grew winter squash; after many years of doing so, the usual run-in with pests (squash-vine borers and cucumber beetles in particular) had reached an overload. I was overdue to give squash and related crops a rest.The vining crops also take a lot of room—which this year I have a bit more of, because I need to rest certain beds from any potato or tomato plants. Growing so many of each of those close relatives lately means my rotation schedule isn’t what it used to be (ideally three years between replanting

He also publishes what is “famously the world’s latest seed catalog” to drop each year, but he’s making no excuses. While other companies are sending out theirs, the Mortons are harvesting the seed those companies ordered from Wild Garden. I’ve gleaned a few of Morton’s plant lessons: about calendula, beneficial insects, and how home gardeners wanting to know just which lettuce to grow can set up their very own seed trial.FRANK MORTON, whose certified-organic Wild Garden Seed farmland is in Philomath, Oregon, grew salad for 18 years for restaurants, “and that’s when I did my breeding,” he recalls. “I had thousands of seeds and plants going and suddenly there was a red one—an accidental cross between a red Romaine and a green oakleaf. But when I saved its seed, I didn’t get red ones, but traits from both parents.”A lettuce breeder was born.“Basically I learned from the lettuce where new varieties come from.”

Native Seeds/SEARCH (NS/S) is a different kind of seed catalog. It’s a non-profit seed bank focused on conservation, and offers many things you won’t see anywhere else–some of them varieties that have been cultivated for thousands of years by America’s native peoples. Through its traveling seed school and other efforts, NS/S serves as a model for other organizations that want to do seed stewardship.And in a shifting climate, its collection of Desert Southwest varieties are proving to have a common trait–drought-tolerance–that looks increasingly appealing as the planet changes rapidly.“There will be larger areas where these crops will be adapted to growing,” said Bill during our recent conversation on my radio show, which is highlighted below.the q&a with bill mcdormanQ. Let’s start with a brief background, Bill—and also can you explain the acronym SEARCH that’s part of Native Seeds

IGOT SHUT OUT IN 2011 after I read about the beet called 3 Root Grex in the Fedco Seed catalog and added the item to my list too late—sold out! The next year I made sure to order fast, but in the meantime I’d dreamed of the beet—or shall I say beets, since it’s a group of three colors from the same parents—craving it more because of the delay in satisfaction.

But lately I’ve been thinking: Why not grow beans for drying (a.k.a. shelling beans)—or at least start experimenting with dry beans for cooking, and see if we can get you hooked?how to grow beansGROWING BEANS, whether for eating fresh or drying, is pretty easy, if you follow some basic tactics:Select a sunny spot with well-drained soil. Rotate the spot you grow your beans, ideally on a three-year schedule, to limit disease transmission. Keep the area free of weeds (especially when the seedlings are young). Use an inoculant rated for beans to get the seeds off to the best possible start

I BOUGHT A PACKET of ‘Sugar Magnolia’ from Oregon-based Peace Seedlings a few months back, just one of what the company calls it many “woddities” (as in wonderful oddities). The first purple-podded snap pea to be introduced is the result of 15 years of breeding by Dr. Alan Kapuler, father to one of the Peace Seedlings proprietors. This is a vigorous grower—to about 8 feet—and has beautiful purple flowers, too.  The pods are tasty; sweet enough, if not the sweetest of all, maybe, but so stunning in a salad, in particular, that I am hooked.  I expect this variety will continue to evolve under Kapuler’s watchful eye, and I’ll be watching, too. (My recent interview with Peace Seedlings.)a big, sweet snow pea, ‘schweizer riesen’IF I COULD ONLY GROW one pea (perish that thought!) I suspect it would be ‘Schweizer Riesen,’ a Swiss heirloom snow pea that produces oversized green peas (above) on vigorous, tall, purple-flowered vines (below). I’ve never been much of a snow-pea person, but this one changed me, when I was introduced to it a couple of years ago by the biodynamic seed company called Turtle Tree Seed, whe

THERESA LOE packs more into a garden—or a canning jar—than anyone else I know. A longtime gardener and city homesteader on just a tenth of an acre in Los Angeles, she manages to layer her back and even front yards much the way she layers cucumber slices and spices into canning jars for her easy, low-salt refrigerator pickles. That how-to and recipe is the second of 13 short lessons this Master Food Preserver is serving up starting this week on “Growing a Greener World,” the PBS series where she is a founding producer.

Wild Garden Seed (my recent story on Wild Garden)‘Purple Peacock’ broccoli Antares Flashback calendula Triangle Flashback/Zeolights calendula Citrus Sherbet Mix calendula Wild Garden lettuce mix ‘Brown Goldring’ lettuce ‘Deer Tongue’ lettuce ‘Merlox Red Oak’ lettuce ‘Delicata Zeppelin’ winter squash Visit Wild Garden Seed’s online catalog Turtle Tree biodynamic seed (my story on Turtle Tree) ‘Aunt Ada’s Italian’ pole bean ‘Schweizer Riesen’ snow pe

The latest longing for a way to store my garden produce properly overtook me last week, when I was looking for images of roots (as in those ant-farm-like diagrams of a cross-section beneath the soil surface of the prairie).  One of the “autofill” suggestions that appeared when I started typing r-o-o-t into a Library of Congress photo-archive search was the phrase “root cellar,” and I could not resist.Suddenly, down the rabbit hole into underground repositories of yesteryear I went, touring historic root cellars around the United States that had been surveyed as part of a Histori

“The Seed Garden: The Art and Practice of Seed Saving,” just released by Seed Savers Exchange in collaboration with Organic Seed Alliance, provides a comprehensive overview of seed saving–both art and science. It includes detailed how-to’s on more than 75 crops: how to grow them with a seed crop in mind, right through to harvest, cleaning and successful storage. (Enter to win a copy in the comments box at the very bottom of the page.)One of the book’s expert contributors, Dr. Timothy Johnson, head of preservation and also the seed bank manager for Seed Savers in Decorah, Iowa, joined me on the May 4, 2015 edition of my pu

The snow that covered 99 percent of my place three days ago is now holding on to only 15 percent, thanks to a few warmer days and a crazy deluge.  But the ground remains locked up tight, an inch of deceptive muck covering rock-solid frost.For now the kale and Brussels sit on the kitchen counter, atop a heat mat and beneath a plastic dome.  When those sprout, broccolis and parsley will go in my improv countertop germination chamber, and that first generation will move to a spot under lights.My tradition about now each year on the website is to post my seed order, but this time I’m embarrassed at wh

EVERY TIME I LOOK AT GAYLA TRAIL’s (a.k.a. You Grow Girl’s) latest book, “Easy Growing,” I want to infuse vinegars and oils and liqueurs with garden-fresh tastes, or hang herbs to dry and prep others to freeze for a wintry day when the garden can’t provide.  So I’ve invited the master of all such things—and an expert seed-saver, too, who even packs them in little handmade origami envelopes—to come visit in September and teach me her tricks for saving the harvest, and storing next year’s seed. Want to join us? Win a copy of her book if you can’t make it—or better yet, sign up for the September 8 daylong workshop with Gayla Trail here at my place. Space is very limited!

I’VE BEEN EXPERIMENTING with a wider palette of brassicas—those good-for-you plants in the mustard family, a.k.a. cruciferous vegetables, or cole crops.

 I GREW SOME GREAT BEANS for drying this year–varieties you could make into baked beans, for instance, or add to vegetable soup, or simply serve as a side dish, cooked up with onion and bay leaf and carrot in just enough water to cover them plus a bit, simmering till tender and delicious. But unlike beans I grow for eating green, these guys make you wait–but how long? About six weeks after the fresh-eating stage, typically, but here’s the thing: You really have to watch the weather, which can be wet in fall, the antithesis to drying anything.

Across the table (below), Tod powered through catalog after catalog as is our custom, voicing highlights as he went–utterances like:“What about fava beans?” and then a minute later, “Definitely getting more sweet potato slips from Southern Exposure.”This all as I mostly just sat—uttering only the occasi

Weil is a keen cook, and it shows in the not-hippie, not-boring, not-weird cuisine that he created with Sam Fox, the founder of the partner restaurant corporation, and Michael Stebner, the executive chef of their now-six-and-counting restaurants. Their approach, whether serving patrons or cookbook readers: “globally inspired cuisine,” and also “delicious food that is also good for you.”As I have been since my 20s, Weil became a lacto-vegetarian in 1970, at age 28, but by the mid-1980s he added fish into his diet, which continued to evolve over the years. “True Food” (book or restaurant) features poultry and bison recipes as well, so non-vegetarians need not panic about coming away hungry. On that topic: I especially love the section called “The Problem of Proper Portions,” in which Weil writes about what’s “just enough.” In Italy, he says, a “serving” of pasta would fit into a teacup. Food for thought.Nothing has the life cooked out of it, and the flavors sound positively vivid. I’m drawn in by such intensely colorful dishes as Fettucine with K

The listing for ‘Aunt Ada’s Italian’ in the catalog from Turtle Tree, a biodynamic seed company and just across “town” here from me, said that the variety came from Italy to Colorado around the turn of the 20th century, with a family called Botanelli. It’s likened to a “small, buttery snap lima” in flavor when steamed. I quickly steamed a bowlful for supper, and drizzled the beans with some olive oil and a dash of salt. Delicious (though admittedly a whole different texture than what you expect from a snap bean, whose seeds are rarely part of each mouthful)!My vines (supported on a bamboo tripod) are a couple of feet taller than the 6 feet predicted, and they started to bear in about 60 days. Pick them when they are not too big (maybe 3 inches long on average) and the seeds inside are starting to show. From the number of flowers on the plant yesterday despite the good haul of pods, I’d say there are plenty more to come.Want to use them for soup or another dry-bean recipe? Let the pods go all the way to withered and tan on the vine, and follow the dry-bean how-to here.This is the second new-to-me

HOW DOES YOUR (PEPPER) GARDEN GROW? Are there healthy green plants, but no fruit? Or maybe fruit with shrunken, dark ends? Need an overall refresher course on growing Capsicum? This page on peppers has answers and links about all that–plus tactics for freezing any excess harvest for offseason use, and how I roast sweet peppers for use now (or to tuck into the freezer, too, all sugary and wonderful, a treat to brighten winter days).Categoriesfreezing & canning recipes & cooking vegetables

The two individuals in the top photo (shot April 9) were cut from my vines in fall and stored in the mudroom closet since, both still heavy and firm and solid as can be. From the feel of them, they’ve got more life left—though I expect I’ll have at the dears well before they falter. The other half-dozen fruits I harvested from that hill last fall would have kept just as well—except I ate them.I bought the seed at Turtle Tree Seed, a biodynamic seed company nearby, specifically because the description said that they’d been “intensively selecting for storage,” saving seed to sell from their ‘Butternut’ harvest each year with lastingness in mind. Another gardener or seed farmer might have selected for another trait—but Turtle Tree was intent on long-storing squash, and that they got.Remember my story about Turtle Tree last year, an interview with co-managers Lia Babitch and Ian Robb

I LOVE THAT the species name for this bug, hilare or hilaris, means cheerful or lively, and indeed its nymph stage (top photo) is colorful as a clown. The adults are bright green and shield-shaped. With its sharp, piercing mouthparts, the green soldier or stink bug is good at eating most anything plant-wise, but really enjoys black cherry, flowering dogwood, pine, highbush blueberries, apples, eggplants, tomatoes and much more. A more complete list of the green stink bug’s diet and a look at its life-cycle. They can damage soybean crops, and out West, Acrosternumis a pest of almonds.squash bug, Anasa tristisIF THE GREEN SOLDIER BUG’S name is cheerful, the most common squash bug’s, Anasa tristis, says it is sad–which is what it was making me when I was picking these guys off regularly earlier this summer.  How to prevent and eliminate squash bugs.three-lined potato beetle,Lema daturaphila or trilineaWHEN I FIRST SAW THESE on my potato foliage in late spring, I thought

Even in the week of July 7, Ken says, he notes 15 or 16 options on his sowing calendar, and that’s in our shared USDA Zone 5B, where frost can arrive around the start of October. Gardeners in zones with longer frost-free seasons have even more time, and opportunities.  Admittedly Ken starts fewer things each week now, but even through September, he’s starting multiple new plantings—and he makes November sowings of spinach and mache for extra-early spring harvest.“Sow now what?” as Ken asks (tee hee). The list is long, including peas, carrots, lettuce, broccoli, bok choy, Chinese cabbage, mibuna and mizuna, tatsoi, kale, collards, cauliflower, kohlrabi, swiss chard, scallions and more. You can even sow more bush zucchini (especially if your early crop is looking tattered or mildewed from tough weather); ditto with cucumbers. Bush beans are high on Ken’s list. It’s a great moment for bush types for dry beans, he says, which benefit from generally drier fall weather at their harvest ti

That’s Lee with his trusty scythe, above, which doesn’t figure into composting, but into how he cuts his meadow-like fields. Impressive, and mesmerizing! I’ve included a couple of his great how-to videos on composting and no-till soil preparation, along with links to the audio of our entire conversation.I was especially excited to visit Lee Reich’s New Paltz, New York, “farmden”–that’s half garden, half farm–since it’s fruit harvest time. Lee is a longtime friend and author of many exceptional garden books, including “Grow Fruit Naturally” and “Weedless Gardening,” and “The Pruning Book,” among others.Read the show notes from our discussion on the October 21,

I almost went for Nigel Slater‘s baked onions with Parmesan and cream, and oh, the chickpea and sweet potato curry called out, too (it calls for pumpkin and onions both).“The Kitchen Diaries” is a book about “right food, right place, right time,” in Slater’s words, and though the precise diary days he fills in this delicious year may not match mine, exactly—Slater is in England—they unfold in similar order.  “Learning to eat with the ebb and flow of the seasons is the single thing that has made my eating more enjoyable,” he writes, eschewing the modern-day supermarket’s all-possibilities-all-the-time approach.Slater’s kitchen doors open onto a small urban London garden, and as I read the recipes and other musings on the weeks and months in the year, I can imagine him moving in and o

Diane, who creates the popular “Bug Bytes” segments on Utah Public Radio’s garden show and serves as the Utah Extension’s Integrated Pest Management Coordinator, joined me on the radio and podcast. It included tactics for preventing and controlling diseases and insect pests of squash—and how a gardener’s toolbox that includes resistant seed varieties, Reemay fabric, kaolin clay, and even a roll of duct tape can help you succeed. (Above, a squash big adult, Anasa tristis; Wikipedia photo by Ilona Loser.)Read along as you listen to the March 16, 2015 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). (A companion story on growing cucurbits step-by-step, is at this link, to complete the package.)listen/read: squash success, with utah

I’M PULLING THE PEAS today, making room for another planting to reap in fall (forces willing).  With one pound of the shelling types that figure to be in the haul, I’m making a sort of pea pesto to serve on pasta, inspired by Hugh Fearnley-Wittingstall’s newest cookbook, “River Cottage Veg,” and his dish called Macaroni Peas.  Get the recipe—and enter to win a copy of the book, proof positive that even a master of meat-centric culinary arts can be swayed to the botanical side of eating, and boasting 200-plus vegetarian recipe (60-plus of them vegan). First, a confession: I don’t own any other Fearnley-Wittingstall books—though I know him as a celebrated television chef; magazine columnist for “The Guardian;” founder of a reknown cooking school and restaurants in and around his base in the South West of England; and the winner of James Beard awards. I’ve been eating low on the food chain for 35 years, so Fearnley-Wittingstall’s biggest hit of all—“The River Cottage Meat Book”—and likewise his acclaimed fish cookbook didn’t match my kitchen style.

If you haven’t grown sorrel, Rumex acetosa, it’s easy from seed but perennializes even in my cold-winter garden (apparently even in Zone 3). It’s one of the first things to be up and growing, so I could have made sorrel soup weeks and weeks ago—or used the young, more tender leaves in salad, where they add a tart, not-quite-lemony flavor. A pretty, red-veined sorrel is especially nice in salads; it’s a close cousin, Rumex sanguineus. Neither species is tasty when the leaves get big and tough, so keep picking. (That’s it emerging in early spring in my raised-bed garden.)Sorrel is related to knotweed (meaning it’s in the Polygonaceae, or buckwheat family, as you can tell when it sends up its flower stalk around now). The Royal Botanic Gardens website says on that it’s native to the British Isles, and was once used to treat scurvy.spinach and sorrel soupTHIS SOUP is very green-tasting and tangy; delicious hot or cold, and thicker or thinner according to your preference.

ingredients:2 Tbsp. olive oil 2 Vidalia onions, chopped 4 large cloves garlic, chopped (more if the cloves aren’t hefty) 3 Tbsp. red chili powder (I used Rancho Gordo’s) 1-½ teaspoon anise seed (optional) 1-½ cups cooked, drained black beans 1-½ cups cooked, drained pinto beans 1-½ cups cooked, drained garbanzo beans 4-½ cups quartered paste tomatoes 2 medium-size sweet peppers, chopped (we used one orange and one yellow) 1 Poblano pepper, chopped (we used one that had aged to red, but wasn’t dried, when it would be called an Ancho; not hot, but adds a rich flavor) 2 or 3 medium-hot small peppers, seeds removed, such as 3 Japaleno, or 1 Jalapeno and 1 Cayenne (Cayenne ar

What do you say we all make this the year of the more inspired approach to eating our vegetables? To that end, I called friend and cookbook author Alana Chernila, whose latest volume is “Eating from the Ground Up: Recipes for Simple, Perfect Vegetables.”We talked about a range of topics from how to roast a potato (no, not by just tossing it on a roasting pan with some oil) or a beet to perfection (ditto), to ingredients you may not be using that can make even a simple side dish into something special. A

TOM STEARNS fell in love forever at age 18. The object of his undying affection: organic agriculture. “I was fascinated with this tool of self-reliance for people: with the seeds,” he says now, nearly 20 years later.But Stearns “didn’t want to grow food to sell to people,” he recalls. “The genetics were what was really interesting to me, because I knew that if we want agriculture to look different on this planet, we’re going to need different seeds.”Ones that weren’t raised with a reliance on heroic amounts of supplemental irrigation, in a world that’s getting drier. Ones that don’t insist on other inputs like lots of fertilizer—especially synthetic chemical fertilizers, or other chemicals.“Organic gardeners are using a dull tool when they use seeds from conventional agriculture,” says Stearns, who

Maybe the variety description says something about a pledge, and makes a comparison to open-source software–the non-proprietary kind that doesn’t require a license to use.Welcome to the world of “freed seed,” a concept inspired by the open-source software movement, but aimed at insuring that the genes in at least some seed varieties can never be patented and otherwise restricted, and thereby locked away

Erica Strauss of NWEdible dot com and I discussed how—plus we’re each offering giveaways of key canning gear to help in the effort. (And no, that’s not us in the 1940s photo above from the Library of Congress–but we both think food preservation is more fun when tackled with friends.) Even if you’re a CSA shareholder or a farm-market shopper, and not a vegetable gardener, now’s likewise the moment to make plans for when the bounty you’ll purchase comes in. Do you have fresh lids for canning jars? Enough pickling salt or citric acid? Have you eaten your way through last year’s canned, dried and frozen goodies to even make room fo