COLDER WEATHER plus shorter days are the ingredients in two things right now at my house: garden cleanup, and also nonstop cooking. Author Alana Chernila just widened my palette on the latter–including how to make all those greens of harvested carrots into pesto, and even on to making crème fraiche and basic cheeses.
“If you know the basic science and a few techniques with home dairy,” says Alana, author of “The Homemade Pantry: 101 Foods You Can Stop Buying and Start Making” (Amazon affiliate link), “the whole world opens up and you can make a zillion different things.”
That first book has been lavished with praise from food stars including Mollie Katzen, and Alana just delivered the manuscript for “The Homemade Kitchen,” due out in fall 2015. She’s a keen gardener whose grow-your-own passion and cookbook writing both began in 2008 with a job selling vegetables in our local farmer’s market–one of the oldest in the nation.
One recent autumn, Alana and I kicked off a duet: a yearlong series of daylong garden-to-table workshops at my place, so I know first-hand how great a teacher she is.
She joined me in October 2014 on my weekly public-radio show and podcast (transcript below) to talk about what’s going on in her kitchen, and garden, as autumn progresses. Our chat began with matters of garden cleanup:
my q&a with alana chernila
Q. Where are you at in your garden cleanup, and what’s still standing? (Don’t worry; this is not a test, Alana.) [Laughter.]A. I always do the same thing every fall: All the beautiful days happen, and I get out there and do a little bit of the cleanup…and then I take walks, and say, “I’ll get out there next week.” And then of course it’s 40 degrees and raining. Now the garden really needs me: I’ve got
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A garden that looks gorgeous with zero effort sounds too good to be true, and it probably is. But it’s certainly possible to create a fabulous, flower-filled garden that’s fuss-free and easy to look after. Eminent garden designer and writer James Alexander-Sinclair has designed gardens across the length and breadth of the UK, and in many other countries besides. Here, he shares some of his trade secrets, for creating gardens that are low-maintenance and lovely, including his favourite fuss-free plants and easy ways to tackle weeds.
ONE OF THE FIRST FRUITS that Josh Kilmer-Purcell and Brent Ridge planted when they took ownership of historic Beekman 1802 farm in Sharon Springs, New York: gooseberries. Now the city-turned-country pair are having a bumper gooseberry year—and Josh joined me on the radio to talk about that and other aspects of “The Heirloom Life,” the subject of the duo’s breakfast slide lecture in my town August 17 to help celebrate my next garden Open Day. I’ve pre-ordered a couple of copies of the “Beekman 1802 Heirloom Dessert Cookbook” (due out in September) to share with some lucky winners, so read on for a chance to win–and some gooseberry lore, recipes and more.
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
IN OUR CHAT on my public-radio program, I learned why not to till when prepping a planting; how to help a desired species outpace an unwanted one by learning to manage and influence natural processes; and what the word “naturalistic” means today.what’s ‘naturalistic,’ anyway?Q. How did the native and natural become your specialty, Larry—did the education in landscape design come first, or the nature and science?A. My first experience in the landscape world was working in traditional horticulture—first a job, and then going to school for it. However my interest in it always came from the naturalistic end.As a kid, I grew up in the urban Philadelphia and I don’t think I even knew there was such as thing as a garden designer, until I got a job with a landscape firm, in the summer between high school and college.But the thing that always interested me was na
EVERYONE’S COME HOME FOR THE WINTER and there isn’t much navigating space in some rooms here–sound familiar? If there were a few more tender plants to accommodate, I’d need to build an addition, to overwinter them all. Until Andre the doodler pointed out the parallel with this weekly doodle, I didn’t know about the show “Hoarders,” oh my oh my.
Research from the nearby Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York, reveals how acorns initiate a complex series of ecological chain reactions. And not just the obvious ways, like feeding turkeys or chipmunks or deer, but in influencing Gypsy moth outbreaks and tick-borne disease risk, and even the reproductive success of ground-nesting songbirds.Dr. Rick Ostfeld, a disease ecologist from Cary Institute, helped me understand what–both seen and unseen–is going on with those tiny acorns and their mighty, wide-ranging influences. Read along as you listen to the Oct. 19, 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).my q&a on acorns’
On my public-radio show, Arboretum director Mark Weathington took me through the years-long process of “discovering” new plants. Plus, Mark highlighted some Arboretum specialties that may belong in your garden, including standout redbuds and mahonias, and the lesser-known evergreen shrub Illicium, and even showy native dogwoods selected to withstand increasingly saline soils in tricky coastal areas.What’s now called the J.C. Raulston Arboretum at North Carolina State University is where I met my first Cephalotaxus–a near-lookalike to our common evergreen yews but excitingly deer-resistant. And then a moment later I met another one–this time a columnar form–an
Last year, Alana and I began teaching a series of workshops at my place on cheesemaking, and also on other subjects around food and gardening. She has a new book, “The Homemade Kitchen,” coming this fall, a followup to her popular 2012 debut with “The Homemade Pantry” (Amazon affiliate link). Alana joined me on the public-radio show and podcast to talk thick, creamy, easy yogurt; what vegetables she’s growing for her special hot sauce, kimchee and sauerkraut, and more. Read along as you listen to the March 23, 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).read/listen:crockpot yogurt and more, with alana chernilaQ. So what’s simm
“How rude of you,” the iridescent birds chattered, swooping madly overhead, then dive-bombing. “We are trying to mate here. Give a bird a little privacy.”“I have my mission, too,” I explained, one aimed at furthering the desired native plant species—little bluestem grass and asters and goldenrods, mostly. Around early May, I use the tractor’s mowing deck to behe
“Vote for the Dinner Party,” the headline on Pollan’s story reads, says, and then the subhed: “Is this the year that the food movement finally enters politics?” It’s pegged to the looming vote on Prop 37, the California Ballot Initiative on the labeling of genetically modified food (which as Pollan points out is not some new invention, but something Americans have been eating for 18 years). But it goes much farther, because as he says:“What is at stake this time around is not just the fate of genetically modified crops but the public’s confidence in the industrial food chain.” A must read (which will appear in print in the Sunday Times magazine).more on prop 37, with an infographicWANT TO READ MORE about Prop 37, and particularly about what companies support labeling and don’t–a shocking list, if you haven’t s
Dan Long–proprietor of Brushwood Nursery aka gardenvines.com–is celebrating 15 years of selling an impressive assortment of hundreds of vining and climbing plants. He joined me from Athens, Georgia, on the latest radio show and podcast, to give us a tour through some upwardly mobile choices in the world of scented things. (Details on how to listen and subscribe free to the program are at the bottom of the page.)my fragrant-vine q&a with dan longQ. I mentioned the recent headlines of new fragrant Clematis–so maybe let’s start there before we talk jasmines and honeysuckles and even some passion flowers and climbing roses, among the many delicious possibilities. When I think fragrant clematis I think of C. mo