Tag: Vegetables

Backyard Selection Dabbling in Plant Breeding

‘Pink Princess’ tomato is a selection from ‘Honey Drop’. Photo by Roberta Bailey ‘Matchbox’ pepper is now an open source selection. Photo by Roberta Bailey By Roberta Bailey Photos by the author Every farmer and gardener can be a plant breeder. Humans have dabbled with plants since they started harvesting and later cultivating them. You

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Leeks: The Ultimate Comfort Food

Young leeks interplanted with carrots and brussels sprouts. Will Bonsall photo The leek “stalk” is a sheaf of elongated leaves bound tightly at the base by the root crown. English photo By Will Bonsall Some academic friends of mine were on sabbatical in southern France when their checks failed to arrive as expected. Weeks went

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Celeriac

Celeriac growing in a garden in mid-August. English photo Harvested celeriac. English photo By Jean English If you’ve had trouble growing good celery, maybe celeriac is the vegetable for you. This biennial, Apium graveolens var. rapaceum, is somewhat easier to grow than its fussier relative, celery; its edible part – a fleshy rootstock – adds

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Kohlrabi As Wonderful as it is Weird

Will Bonsall holds a ‘Gigante’ storage kohlrabi. Photo by Yaicha Cowell-Sarofeen Summer kohlrabi varieties are much smaller than the storage types and should be eaten within a few days of harvest. English photo By Will Bonsall The so-called “cabbage family” – actually the species Brassica oleracea – has given us several botanical monstrosities we enjoy

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Garden Tips

My source of water is city water, which can be expensive if watering a large garden. I have a sump pit in my basement, so I set up a rain barrel and attached a sump hose from the pit outlet pipe to the rain barrel through an opening I cut in the rain barrel cover.

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Rhubarb

Rha rha for rhubarb! English photo. By Roberta Bailey I don’t grow rhubarb. My neighbor has a double row with more than 20 plants in it. I just cross the street and pick what I need. Walking back to my house, a bundle of red stalks in my arms, I get to take in the

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Collards

A lush planting of collards (front row) and kale at the Johnny’s Selected Seeds display at the 2010 Common Ground Country Fair. English photo. By Jean Ann Pollard Collards. Until a few years ago, this big, paddle-leafed member of the cabbage family – Brassica oleracea, Acephala group – was considered strictly Southern in the United

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Fall Cleanup or Not

Sheep feed on a summer cover crop of Japanese millet, with another garden in the background. Photo by Eric Sideman. By Eric Sideman, Ph.D. Gardeners do not often think of themselves as managers, but they are. At this time of year, which I refer to as Fair time, gardeners have to make a very important

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Salsify and Its Many Uses

‘Hoffmann’s Schwarze Pfahl’ black scorzonera, growing at Khadighar. Will Bonsall photo. As a youth, I knew salsify only as an obscure reference in an Uncle Remus tale, along with persimmons and calamus root. But never Salsify. When I began gardening, I saw salsify in the novelty section of seed catalogs, along with plants such as

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Artichokes

Artichokes. Photo from wiki.com/healthyrecipes. Growing Artichokes in Maine By Cheryl A. Wixson The impressive and mighty artichoke is actually the flower bud of a large thistle-family plant. This delectable but formidable-looking vegetable dates backs for centuries and was prized by Romans as food of the nobility. Widely grown France, Italy and Spain, and California, Maine

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