If you have lettuce seed packets hanging around from spring, now would be a good time to plant lettuces to be harvested this fall. Using a readymade mesclun mix is a quick way to get something good in your salad bowl. The seed is scattered, and individual baby leaves are cut (using scissors, never ripped by hand) from small plants, allowing the developing central crowns to … [Read more...] about Planting fall lettuces
Food to grow
Saving tomato and pepper seed
When a tomato or pepper plant produces well, there’s always an urge to collect seeds and try to repeat success next summer. The process of saving seeds can be as easy as collecting and drying pepper seeds, and safely packaging them for next year. Or it can be a bit more complicated if you want to save tomato seeds, which require fermentation to remove their germination … [Read more...] about Saving tomato and pepper seed
Urban beehives make tasty honey
It’s no secret or surprise to gardeners that pollinators are essential to our gardens and, more importantly, to our food supply. One hopes more people, including non-gardeners, are learning this, too. Although we may know why healthy bee colonies are important, what can we do to help make bees happy? What’s the role of urban bee colonies? And just where, exactly, does honey … [Read more...] about Urban beehives make tasty honey
Tree & Twig Heirloom Vegetable Farm tasting
On a hot, sticky day last week I found myself in Wainfleet, a small township in the Niagara region of Ontario. We all know that delicious things come out of Niagara, and I took the opportunity to visit Tree and Twig Heirloom Vegetable Farm, the home of a huge vegetable garden (not to mention a wonderful pig named Joey). I've grown tomato seedlings from Tree and Twig for the … [Read more...] about Tree & Twig Heirloom Vegetable Farm tasting
Big and little Hubbard squash
Rooting around in my green grocer’s winter squash bins, I was impressed by some of the monolithic Hubbard squash, looking more like granite boulders than vegetables. Surely these blue-grey monsters would be more appropriate for a Neanderthal-era pantry! My kitchen knives are adequate for onions, but I’m not sure they could measure up to a full-size Hubbard that could feed a … [Read more...] about Big and little Hubbard squash
