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Category Archives: What’s Growin’ On
Growing Broccoli – Italian Style
Each year it’s exciting to try growing new things. This fall we planted an Italian broccoli previously unexplored: Cavolo Broccolo a Getti di Napoli
That’s a mouthful. Basically it means that it’s a broccoli from Southern Italy, specifically Naples, that has a sprouting behavior. “Getti” literally means “jets” in Italian. It shoots out little
heads of broccoli, but more than that, the leaves are edible!
Broccolo a Getti di Napoli seeds
I picked up these seeds at the LA Garden Show at the …
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A Gardenerd’s Wish List, 2010
Each year it is a family tradition to form a wish list in October for holiday gift-giving ease. Inevitably, my wish list gravitates toward garden gear. I’m sure my family is sick of it by now, but
when you’re a gardener, what else do you need?
It has become a Gardenerd tradition to share the wish list on the blog, not to solicit gifts, but to revert back to childhood and dream big together. Here’s what I hope Santa brings this year:
Patriot Electric …
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Kidney Bean Bonanza
With cool weather upon us, it’s time for soups and stews. What better way to showcase the often-neglected kidney bean (it’s not just for the salad bar) than to highlight some of our favorite dishes
made with this crimson legume?
I’ll confess, I didn’t grow kidney beans this summer, but I will someday. In the meanwhile, we buy them dry and soak them overnight to make great meals. We cook them for about 15 minutes in a
pressure cooker and voila! Perfect beans.
Cooked …
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MacGyver me this: Broken Watering Can Rose
There isn’t much that can’t be fixed with duct tape. Garden tools are no exception. While I wouldn’t trust a loose-headed pick-axe after wrapping it with several rounds of
shiny silver duct tape, I would trust it to fix my reliable yet cheap, plastic Rite-Aid watering can with a broken rose attachment.
Plastic is, as we know, forever. Except in the case when it photo-degrades. Plastic pots or tools become brittle and cracked, and eventually useless for their intended purpose. …
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The New 2011 Spring/Summer Organic Seed Collection
This being the beginning of the holiday season, and the first day of Hanukkah, it felt only fitting to unveil the all-new 2011 Spring/Summer Organic Seed Collection from the
Gardenerd Store. Read about the great choices for your spring garden (makes a great gift or stocking stuffer!) and see why we chose them for your garden.
Who needs gold coins when you can have gardener’s gold like this instead:
All photos
courtesy of Seeds …
courtesy of Seeds …
Kohlrabi – the Alien Vegetable
As most brassicas go, broccoli is pretty attractive, and cabbage conjures comforting thoughts of Irish stews and Asian stir-fry dishes. There’s one brassica, however, that
makes people double-take when they see it on the shelves of the produce aisle: kohlrabi.
Kohlrabi looks something like a broccoli stem that had its molecules reorganized in the transporter (sorry, couldn’t avoid the Trekkie reference). It has leaves like broccoli, but instead of the
long stalk, it has a bulb at the base of …
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Pea Protection
Last week we talked about how to grow peas. Ordinarily it’s easy as pie, but what do you
do when creatures of the night and/or sky make it their business to snatch up all your delicate sprouts before they have a chance to take hold in the soil?
You build a fortress.
That’s what we did, anyway. We planted 3 rounds of peas, and each time they were plucked out by rats or birds, we can’t tell which. So …
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Back to the Ranch – Huntington Style
I’d been dying to see the secret Huntington Ranch for over a year. Back then, I read an article in the Huntington Library and Garden’s monthly newsletter about the
development of a new vegetable garden on the property. I searched and searched each time I went to try and find its secret location to no avail.
Then an invitation to an all-day symposium for professional garden nerds hit my inbox, and when I saw that the events of the day …
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Growing Peas – The Garden Snack Food
Most people grow peas in the spring. I like to grow them in the fall. I think I started growing them in fall primarily because, A) we can, and 
I need my trellises for other things in the spring. Over the years peas have become a prominent part of my fall garden, lending height
and tastiness to fall garden chores.
They never make it into the house. A …
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Bad Haircuts – the Cutworm Way
People aren’t the only ones to suffer from a bad haircut every once in a while. Plants get them too. The only difference is that the garden stylist servicing
your plants is much less forgiving – in fact, the cutworm’s handiwork is usually fatal.
I’ve done a podcast about this already, but now I have pictures to go with it. So for those of you who haven’t seen a cutworm in action, this is for you.
…
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