Vegetables Ideas, Tips & Guides

Tomatillos (Physalis ixocarpa or P. philadelphica, depending which variety you grow) are cousin to the tomato and other solanaceous crops or nightshades, such as peppers, potatoes, and eggplants. But it’s much easier to see their even closer relationship to the Chinese lantern, Physalis alkekengi, a somewhat-thuggish perennial that’s wonderful dried, with its papery orange husks (the lanterns, technically the calyx).Gayla of You Grow Girl [dot] com  is a mad canner who also admits to an obsession with solanums—“even including just-on-the-verge-of-edible ones,” she says—so I knew the plain old edible tomatillo and salsa would be a great topic for us.growing tomatillosIN GAYLA’S Toronto, Ontario, location and mine in New York State, tomatillos that set fruit will then self-sow the coming year (assuming some fruit is left in the garden to do so). But we don’t get enough early heat to prompt those seedlings to get up and growing in time to accom

THE ADVENTURE IN Mollie Katzen’s “The Heart of the Plate: Vegetarian Recipes for a New Generation,” begins even before the first recipe page. It starts in the delicious, intimate endpapers—which came from illustrated journals that the author has been keeping since she was a teenager, which were also the origin of her beloved, bestselling “Moosewood Cookbook.” The musings (that’s one in the photo above), in drawings and hand-lettered words, speak to how Mollie—a keen gardener, and the guest on my latest radio show—approaches food today. Learn how she suggests we re-define “vegetarian;” how she “paints [her] rice,” and makes her simplest, most delicious tomato sauce. And maybe win her newest book, too. 

LISTEN IN to my chat with WNYC’s Amy Eddings, on their “Last Chance Foods” segment that aired today. Their whole season of “Last Chance Foods,” part of WNYC’s version of “All Things Considered,” is archived here.tomato junk recipeingredients:olive oil garlic onion 1 teaspoon to 1 ton anything edible left in your garden or at the farmer’s market, including herbs such as parsley and basil tomatoes, equal to at least one-third the total volume of ingredients water salt and pepper to taste Especially good vegetable choices include: summer squash such as zucchini; green beans; brassicas such as kale or broccoli; chard.Trickier choices: cabbage, or beet or mustard greens, and other distinctive-tasting vegetables, including roots such as turnip; hot peppers; or eggplant, that might overtake the flavor or texture of the Junk.Celery and carrots work well in batches that will become soup. Include spicier peppers

TORONTO-BASED Gayla Trail was a rooftop gardener for many years, so growing things in pots was her norm (proof is in the photo below). But many of the commercial varieties of container and hanging-basket tomatoes, she says, don’t taste too good—they’re bland, and often tough-skinned. Long ago she started on the hunt for ones that are better.Now Gayla has a real backyard (“like a bowling alley,” she says), but she still likes the dwarf types for other reasons: They’re small plants and reach maturity early (60-ish days, versus closer to 80 for a beefsteak type). That means she can extend her tomato-harvest backwards into June (again, even in Toronto!).Other features she favors of these smallest of the tomato-plant world:“Dwarf types tend to have ruffled leaves,” she says, technically called rugose, which are handsome-looking, and some plants are “tumbling types” that are especially suited to making

I say “beyond” because some of those seeds came with Rowen from the colder, wetter Northeast, her “living, breathing relatives that want to live and grow with the earth, she says,” just as she does, “witnesses to the past” that tell stories that might otherwise be lost–stories she has dedicated herself to keeping alive. Like Rowen, the seeds have adapted to their new home, and thrived–including colorful corns for many distinct purposes both cultural and culinary.Rowen (above, braiding corn), who was elected in 2014 to the board of Seed Savers Exchange, is also co-author of the handbook, “Breeding Organic Vegetables: A Step by Step Guide for Growers” (pdf). We spoke on my public-radio show and podcast about curating Native American seeds; about the benefits of polyculture (Rowen adds

Q. Since all gardening starts with the soil, Ira, one that really caught my eye was the DIY soil test with dishwashing powder and water in the glass jar. A. I first came across the test back in the 70s, when I was a 4-H and Girl Scout leader. The area in North Carolina where I was living at the time had red clay (just like we do here in Virginia).You can sort of tell what kind of soil you have by making a ball of it in your hand, but to be more clear about your soil texture—so you can have a better idea of moisture-holding capacity and how much organic material in the form of compost you need—this test is great.You take a quart Mason jar, fill it one-third to half full with soil. Make sure you’re just getting soil, and not big clumps of grass; go below that, to sample the first 6 inches.A trowel you use for planting bulbs is great for getting a soil profile.Then add water until the jar is about t

Ira is a board member of the Organic Seed Alliance, and also the author of the brand-new “Timber Press Guide to Vegetable Gardening in the Southeast” (affiliate link). Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, situated in central Virginia, between Richmond and Charlottesville, offers 700-plus varieties of open-pollinated seed, including many heirlooms, many mid-Atlantic and Southeast focused.Which brings up the topic of regionality—a potential factor in how a particular variety of tomato or cuke or another crop will perform for you.  Notations in catalogs such as days to maturity or how a variety holds up to heat or handles diseases common in your area may have influenced whether you chose one type of seed over another. Lately I’ve been learning how regionally sourced seed–seed that was grown on a seed farm with relatively similar conditio

Turns out Mendel started his scrupulous research by simply going down to the market in Brno (in the Moravian region of what is now the Czech Republic) and buying 34 varieties of peas from several seedsmen.  (Makes me a bit less self-conscious that I ordered eight kinds to grow in my garden.)It was no accident that Mendel chose peas as his subject, I also learned recently: They didn’t take up much space in the confines of the monastery garden, and most important: The structure of a pea flower, with its enclosed fertilizing organs, means that random cross-pollination isn’t likely.Like a good gardener (and “an amazing scientist,” said Professor Eric S. Lander of MIT, who taught theEdX online class I audited and himself one of the principal lead

‘PLANT A CARROT, get a carrot, not a Brussels sprout,’ proclaims the song from the 1960 (and ongoing) musical “The Fantasticks.” But in 2014–no thanks to genetic engineering, gladly, but to charmingly low-tech creativity and total brilliance–you can plant a carrot and get a clarinet. I’ve been watching this over and again for weeks, and meant to share it sooner.

A summer earlier, I’d learned how to make vegetable soup from my friend Irene, a longtime food writer. (My adaptation of her recipe.) The ingredients include garlic, onions, carrots, celery, kale or chard or collards, broccoli or cauliflower, summer squash, shell beans (such as chickpeas or cannellini), green beans, tomatoes, tomatoes, parsley and basil. As I gained my confidence with the basic recipe, I also made some batches with shelling peas or even snap peas, instead of a portion of the green beans—lending a slightly sweeter flavor. And some batches even included a little of each.I don’t grow the celery, nor the chickpeas (nor water, olive oil, salt and pepper, of course), but everything else is under way once the garden gets going.What was most interesting: While, say, any yellow onion or type of garlic will do, certain varieties of vegetables proved particularly well adapted to soup-making, and I want to recommend them:‘Juliet’ tomatoes (above) are smallish but flavorful, not-too-thick skinned, and heavy producers; my choice for sauce and soup. I never

I’M WATERING THEN SHADING the garden beds where peas grew fat and sweet until early July, when their time was done.  The heat and calendar told them to stop, but I’m carrying on—making the now-empty spot hospitable for something else by cooling the soil a bit so something delicious for fall harvest will be happy to germinate, and get growing.

All growing season, I get questions asking how to prevent, or cure, one vegetable garden disease or pest or another–especially on Cucurbits.  My answers are mostly not perfect ones, because almost faster than we figure out some effective tactic, plant diseases can outsmart us by mutating, or getting an edge from dramatically changing weather patterns–or by moving into regions where they were not previously known.So what can be done, longterm, beyond trying to “fix” the one outbreak in just your, or my, backyard, and especially: What’s the bigger answer without turning to chemicals?The answer hopefully lies in research: research that identifies the best current varieties, and often leads to breeding of more disease-resistant and regionally adapted var

FORGET DIAMONDS. A freezer is a girl’s best friend.

David Mattern, who oversees the vegetable garden at the splendid public space called Chanticleer in Pennsylvania, is my latest target. You may recall that last fall, David helped us take a critical eye to our vegetable gardens as we took them apart during cleanup, and challenged us also to consider tilling less in the year to come for improved soil health and fewer weeds.David is a graduate of Longwood’s Professional Gardeners Training Program, and after that interned in England at some prestigious spots including West Dean Gardens in West Sussex, with its famed walled vegetable garden.He rejoined me on the January 9, 2017 edition of my public-radio show and podcast to h

And that’s where the seed for ‘Liebesapfel’—the pepper that began Sarah Kleeger and Andrew Still’s fast-growing Capsicum annuum collection—arrived from, or more specifically, Germany via Denmark.On their first Seed Ambassadors trip to search out potentially Northern-adapted seed from Europe in 2006, Sarah and Andrew carried ‘Liebesapfel’ (left) back to the New World themselves—tho

Spinach has come a long way from its point of origin literally and also genetically, but which of the many varieties available today is for you, and when and how can you plant this nourishing green for best success?I invited Tom Stearns, longtime organic seed farmer and founder of High Mowing Organic Seeds in Vermont, to help me become a better spinach grower—and find my way through the many choices of spinach leaf types, and varieties from heirloom to hybrid. We talked about the oddball reproductive system that makes spinach bolt and other insights, like how among all the vegetable cro

His background: Concerned about the lack of organic seed to meet the needs of a growing number of organic farmers, Tom started farming seed in 1995, and now employs 65 people at the Wolcott, Vermont-based High Mowing Organic Seeds headquarters, in Zone 4B. High Mowing originated the Safe Seed Pledge that more than 100 seed companies have signed on to since 1999, speaking out in unison against genetically engineered crops.When we last spoke, Tom said something I think bears repeating:“Organic gardeners are using a dull tool when they use seeds from conventional agriculture.”With that need, and the needs of organic farmers in mind, High Mowing breeds, grows, and sells both open-pollinated and hybrid varieties that are all certified organic. We spoke this week about that product mix, and about breeding directions at the farm.the q&a with tom stearnsQ. Something you wrote, Tom, in the opener to your 2014 catalog: “Whether you love the uniqueness and story of heirlooms and OP’s, or the uniformity of hybrids, we have the

Good Heart Farmstead began in 2013, located 9 miles north of Montpelier in Zone 4, with a goal of becoming a “full-diet CSA,” but quickly evolved otherwise.“We raised sheep, turkeys, pigs, laying hens and broilers, and grew a long list of vegetable crops,” Kate recalls of Year 1. “AND we had a baby. It was crazy.”Add to that the fact that in year one Edge and Kate were cutting their mesclun by hand, meaning it took so long to harvest that they couldn’t

Eliot Coleman has written extensively about organic agriculture since 1975. He has more than 50 years’ experience in all aspects of the subject and has been a commercial market gardener, the director of research projects, a designer of tools for farmers and gardeners, and a teacher and lecturer. He and his wife, Barbara Damrosch, operate Four Season Farm, a commercial year-round market garden in Maine.Read along as you listen to the Oct. 8, 2018 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).Learn why he invokes us to “cultivate ease and order, not battle disease and disorder,” and more—plus enter to win the revised edition of “The New Organic Grower: A Master’s Manual

Matching the specific variety of edible to its intended use just makes sense, especially if putting up some of the harvest is in your plans. It has always been in Carol’s.“I was born into a family that grew its own food,” says Carol. “My Swedish grandmother planted a garden every summer that was counted on to feed the whole family–my grandparents, their five children, spouses, and grandchildren.”And that meant food year-round, much of it canned over a woodstove in a New Hampshire house that had no running water or electricity. From a young age, she helped carry water from the well 200 yards uphill in a pair of buckets on a wooden yoke over her shoulders at food-preserving time, to get the water baths going.A “rock-reinforced hole in the ground” was their root cellar

Though no Cucurbits (the family that gourds fit into) are Italian natives, they’re important in its cuisine, and its expressive language seems to fit these expressive plants, including some melons, squash and gourds that can attain dirigible proportion, with personalities as large.I saw cucuzzi listed in Hudson Valley Seed Library’s catalog and called co-founder Ken Greene. “Want to talk about favorite crazy Cucurbits?” I proposed. It was an offer he couldn’t refuse. Here’s our rundown of some real charmers:cucuzzi (lagenaria siceraria):‘WE’RE NOT USED to eating gourds–and don’t

I guess that’s why she titled her 2011 book, “The Year-Round Vegetable Gardener: How to Grow Your Own Food 365 Days a Year No Matter Where You Live.”Niki’s vegetable garden in Halifax just got a facelift to become even more productive. She is one of the contributors to the blog Savvy Gardening and creator of the award-winning radio program, The Weekend Gardener, that’s heard throughout Eastern Canada. And we spoke just in time for all of us us to order the seeds and learn the tactics we’ll need to grow our own offseason gardens, too.Read along as you listen to the Aug. 8, 2

We should be doing “successions,” or new sowings, all along during the growing season in our edible gardens, but it’s never more important than right now, especially up North where Katie and I garden. As summer comes on strong, we need to focus on continued vegetable and herb harvests through fall frost or even beyond. But what, and when?Katie Spring and her husband, Edge Fuentes, make their living eking out every possible week of deliciousness and productivity–even in Zone 4 Northern Vermont. Katie also works part of the year with my friends at High Mowing Organic Seeds, as if she is not busy enough with CSA and wholesale clients, farm animals, and family at the couple’s GoodHeartFarmstead, 9 miles north of Montpelier (photo above of their seed house an

In this increasingly bountiful produce season, whether from the CSA, farmers’ market, or backyard, I’ve been turning to inspiration to my friend Alexandra Stafford’s website, Alexandra’s Kitchen, and to her Instagram feed, too. In a Q&A on my public-radio show and podcast, Ali’s shared how to store vegetables to make them last longest (hint: cut green off those roots at once, for instance) to recipes for pasta carbonara that uses a ton of them, or grilled-veggie tacos (photo, top of page), plus various sauces, quick pickles and pestos, too.Plus: Enter to win a copy of Ali’s cookbook “Bread Toast Crumbs” by using the comment form at the very bottom of the page. Read along as you listen to the June 25, 2018 edition of the podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes or

Lee is the author of so many books, including, “A Northeast Gardener’s Year,” “The Pruning Book,” “Weedless Gardening,” (enter to win a copy below) “Uncommon Fruits for Every Garden,” “Landscaping with Fruit,” and “Grow Fruit Naturally.”  He is also an exceptional vegetable gardener, so I was pleased to get his advice to get started with some new crops, and with some new tricks with familiar crops. He also shared a helpful seed-starting video, which is partway through the transcript below.Read along as you listen to the Feb. 8, 2016 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).my seed-starting q&a with lee reichQ. I guess I have to ask: Have you ordered all your seed?A. I have, actually. I try to get them all ordered before the end of the year.

Eaten when orange and ripe, the recently released ‘Habanada’ has a floral character and a lingering sweetness, plus just a hint of spice, says its breeder, Michael Mazourek of Cornell University (above).Though the ‘Habanada’ was developed during research for the PhD Mazourek earned in 2008, it wasn’t commercially available until this season, when Fruition Seeds licensed it from Cornell, to sell by mail as transplants. Plans are to build up quantity of seed in coming years, and sell packets, too.The

[podcast url=” http://podcasts.am1020whdd.com/~am1020wh/shows/mp3/A_Way_To_Garden-December_9_Lia_Babitch_Turtle_Tree_Seeds.mp3″]I PROMISED Lia I wouldn’t make her try to explain the entire system of biodynamics on the air–but in very short: It’s a system of agriculture that incorporates the power of all the dynamic, subtle forces of nature and does not incorporate any synthetic inputs like chemicals. Ever.“We don’t do any of the bad stuff that ‘certified organic’ doesn’t let you do,” says Lia, “but we also do a bunch of good stuff that helps the soil and the ecosystem.” (You can read more about it here.)my q&a with lia babitch of turtle treeQ: First: Let’s get a little background on the Turtle Tree seed company, Lia.

Regular listeners will remember my winter conversation with Joseph about shopping the seed catalogs–when with his Joseph-style enthusiasm he got us all madly poring over his list of unusual sources, and confessed to such addictions as dwarf tomatoes, and zinnias.What he didn’t admit to then were the pepper and gladiolus addictions, and he failed to tell us about his recently self-published book of kooky illustrations about guess what? The state of garden obses

Organic seed commands a premium price, and limits my choices of vegetable varieties, but as regular readers know, I prefer it. I believe seed bred and raised under organic conditions is the best match for my organic garden’s conditions, and also want to vote with my dollars of demand to help create supply.Having the right seed can provide farmers with the genetic tools to confront day-to-day challenges in the field, so to organic farmers, limited selection and higher prices in organic seed represent a far greater obstacle than to a gardener. Despite the phenomenal growth of the org

As with many other blessings, I have my friends at the Organic Seed Alliance to thank for my introduction to Adaptive Seeds, which had a big year in 2013: Andrew and his partner Sarah Kleeger turned their entire farm operation over to seeds, closing their CSA; completed their official organic certification; and ramped up to double their seed assortment to 400 varieties—including 65 new to their catalog this year.View the pdf of the Adaptive catalog now Shop the catalog online Order a print catalog from adaptiveseeds [at] gmail [dot] com my q&a with andrew still of adaptive seedsQ. So a little background first, please, Andrew—a short history of Adaptive Seeds and what you and Sarah [photo above] are doing.A. This is our fifth catalog. We have been farming between Brownsville and Swee

“We would be sad if people shied away from such an iconic garden vegetable,” says Brian, who with Crystine Goldberg farms organic seed, including for beets, in Bellingham, Washington–seed they sell in their online and print Uprising catalog. “What is more beautiful than a bunch of voluptuous bright red beetroots in a harvest basket en route from the garden to the kitchen?”All too often, our only experience with beets means the usual suspects—ubiquitous varieties like ‘Detroit Dark Red’ or ‘Early Wonder,’ or produce sold without their greens and even pre-packaged or canned. Brian confesses he doesn’t have much experience with those, and for a good reason: There are better beets to be had, and grown.my beet-growing q&a with brian campbellQ. When can I

Niki helped convince me of that, as part of my annual wintertime seed series. She is author of “The Year-Round Vegetable Gardener: How to Grow Your Own Food 365 Days a Year No Matter Where You Live,” and a contributor to the blog Savvy Gardening dot com. She also creates the award-winning radio program, The Weekend Gardener, heard throughout Eastern Canada.Most relevant to this discussion, though: she grows a global range of vegetables and other edibles—from the world’s craziest cucumbers and edible gourds, to “Chinese artichokes” that aren’t artichokes at all, to oddball salad ingredients and even rice, quinoa and more.Read along as you listen to the Jan. 2, 2107 edition of my

MAYBE YOU’RE WONDERING this about now: Why do vegetable seedlings stretch and grow spindly sometimes, and how can you prevent such leggy seedlings? That was how I began a note to Dr. Thomas Bjorkman, Professor of Crop Physiology at Cornell, seeking an answer to a question I’m asked a lot.

Lacto-fermented pickles, hot sauce, kimchi, preserved lemons all command a high price at the fanciest markets, as well as at farmstands.And of course lacto-fermentation is what turns milk into yogurt, and what turns the familiar, lowly cabbage into sauerkraut (which we’ll learn a bit more about in a moment).I got a lacto-fermentation 101 from Seattle-based

To get help with that, I spoke to David Mattern, who oversees the vegetable garden at Chanticleer in Pennsylvania (seen above and below). I’ve been lucky to have a series of conversations with various experts there, colleagues of David’s, who combine garden artistry with the soundest horticultural techniques, as he does.Take a critical eye to your own vegetable patch as you tease it apart and put it to bed for the winter, plus consider boosting your soil with cover crops. And this: How about tilling or turning soil less, and instead investing in a broadfork?Read along as you listen to the Sept. 12, 2016 edition of my public-radio show and podcast using the player below. You can subscribe to all future editions on iTunes or Stitche

“They’re our biggest unpaid staff workers,” says Brian. “They’re the pollinators that we depend on, so we really pay attention.”We discussed why building up your pollinator palette of extra-early bloomers in particular is important; which families of plants have the most impact, and how certain flowering things like Alyssum and Phacelia may help attract aphid-fighting helpers–and even a bigger role for cilantro!Read along as you listen to the Feb. 4, 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 po