How to Harvest Feverfew

If you are someone who loves to see veggies grow fast, then you must check out these delicious and Fast Growing Vegetables For Quick Harvest!

You can win one of two, three-book sets that I’ve purchased to share as prizes—no, not my old food-splattered copies, above, but new ones. Promise! All you have to do to have a chance in the truly random drawing (I’ll use the tool at random [dot] org to pick a winner) is comment below, and be a subscriber to my email newsletter. All the details are at the end of this post.Your comment should simply tell us what you like to put up for later from your garden or the farmer’s market—and it can be as simple as a sentence or include a recipe or a link to one; up to you.Tips and Tricks:Immediate ideas and tips on coping with the harvest can be had from these articles:What’s in My Freezer at Harvest Time: a Roundup of Ideas Making Pesto: Garlicky Green Ice Cubes Growing and Storing a Year of Parsley (good for many other green herbs, too) Dan Koshansky’s Hand-Me-Down Refrigerator Pickles Vegetable Curry-in-a-Hurry ‘Love Apple

I used to get confused and wait to harvest the bulbs until the topgrowth was all brown, the way you let daffodils and tulips and other bulbs fully “ripen” before removing the foliage.In fact, prime harvest time is when some lower leaves have gone brown but about a half-dozen up top are still green. For me that was a week or so ago; depending on the year, it can be July or August. Carefully dig one or two heads, and check to see that the cloves are wrapped nicely in papery tissue; that the heads are really ready. To get them

Don’t let its relatives mislead you. Garlic’s close cousin, the onion (Allium cepa), is more adaptable about its ideal moment to be lifted and cured. You can simply let the tops (leaves) die down right in place, delaying digging a bit to when it’s convenient. Or if you’re in a rush, move things along (assuming the bulbs are well-formed) by knocking over the foliage to urge the plants toward their finale.With garlic, though, waiting until all the leaves go brown will promote overripe bulbs whose cloves are starting to separate from one another, and the resulting un-tight heads won’t store as long. Each leaf that browns is one fewer potential wrapper to protect the bulb. (Counterpoint: Harvesting too soon can also diminish the bulbs’ shelf life in storage, and may limit the bulbs r

The Deer’s Delicate Palate: We all wonder (often in loud expletives when something has been chewed) what it is that deer won’t eat. I loved this online tool created at Rutgers University Extension (based on observations in northern New Jersey) that rates things from “Rarely Damaged” to “Frequently Severely Damaged” (above) in a five-point scale that seems more sensible to me that saying anything’s “deerproof.” We could all benefit from this kind of thinking, a sort of risk-assessment philosophy of planting in the presence of these beasts. (You know me; I don’t. I gave up and got a deer fence.)Compost-Bin Envy: I have never met Ryan Boren, one of the lead developers (read: software engineer) for WordPress, the platform I so love and that this site is built on. Who knew that Boren is also adept with wood-working tools and built himself a composter-to-covet at the Texas home he shares with his growing family and some mighty cute goats. The “after” shot of his three-stage compost bin is here; the detail shots here.An Old Friend, Overplanted:

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.

I’m making soup this week because the hodgepodge lodge of produce on hand (above) says “soup” to me.  I’ve got a mammoth onion donated to the cause by regular visitor and commenter Blue Arrow, and a pile of summer squash that another “regular” here, Kathy of Cold Climate Gardening, left behind when she visited in person last week (and wrote a very nice story, thank you).From my own jungle I plucked beans and kale and parsley and garlic, and a few tomatoes.I’d need some corn, too, if I were going to make the exceptionally quick and easy Late Summer Vegetable Soup from Everyday Food and Dinner Tonight, but I’m saving that for next time.My first batch of soup to freeze this year will be from Sara Kate at Apartment Therapy’s thekitchn.com, who with her blogger husband, Maxwell, welcomed me to the blogosphere at my debut in spring. (They a

Now I have a third way to put up my annual bounty of parsley (the first two are here): three “bunches” will go into each batch of “Parsley Soup” that Thomas says is like “a rustic leek and potato soup that’s been taken over by a gang of parsley, but in the nicest way.”A double batch of “Green Soup With Sweet Potatoes and Sage” (top photo, in the bowl on the right) is already in my freezer; a whole section of “green soups” (using leafy greens as a key ingredient) is a particular delight, since I seem to have mastered their growing this year and have more than I thought I could ever otherwise use.T

Though some herbs stand up through the first frosts (like parsley and sage), I’m packing them away now in various forms in the freezer (that’s what all those plastic bags are: herb stashes, usually as cubes or dense rolls of leaves I can slice off chunks of later. My tactic. My herb-freezing career began with garlickly green ice cubes of traditional sweet-basil pesto, like the ones above. I make eight ice-cube trays full. I could keep winter squash around in storage here in the house for months, and I will with some of the most beautiful fruits. But I bake a lot of them now, cut in half or smaller on rimmed cookie pans, skin side up, and when the flesh is tender then puree and freeze it, meaning I’m more inclined to grab a portion for supper than if I have to start from scratch that night. Pureed squash is also great in soups and even on pasta or brown rice, or at least here it is.(Question: I have a bumper sweet-potato crop; anybody ever mashed and frozen those?)Gooey green-

First, even if your tomatoes faltered or died, you may not have had late blight (I did not, to the best of my knowledge). An examination by a plant pathologist is the only way to be sure, but extensive late-blight photos at this Cornell link provided visual clues.Instead, one of a number of fungal diseases, particularly in a wet year like 2009, may have infected your plants, and/or a bacterial infection may have been present—such as a speck, spot or canker—oh, and there are viruses, too. We’ve talked about them before here. There is no shortage of possibilities; every time I look at Cornell’s Vegetable MD Online site, I am amazed and humbled that we ever ripen a tomato. Some surprising facts, and my intended tactics:Assuming this year’s last blight was the same strain normally seen, it can only overwinter on live plant tissues, not dead, in a cold zone like the Nort

IAM WAITING, WATCHFULLY, FOR THE MOMENT–the garlic-harvest moment. Unlike its botanical cousin the onion, garlic doesn’t want to be left to go completely brown in the garden–but digging it too soon can diminish storage life as well.

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