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Gardening News & Articles |
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washingtonpost.com - A Cook's Garden by Barbara Damrosch
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How to Rid the Garden of Pesky Field Mice
They're cute, they're furry and they're ruining the garden. It's time to get tough.
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Cabbages' Little Dividends
If the economic news seems bad, don't look at the scary graphs. Go take a walk in your garden. Notice the fact that from tiny seeds, large things have grown that are now delicious to eat. Keep an eye out for unexpected returns on your vegetable investments.
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Take a Page From an Old Classic
Like so many gardening books, it has a green cover. The dust jacket is long gone, the binding is coming undone, the corners dented from use. It's the book I kept by my side during my early years as a gardener and one I refer to still: J.I. Rodale's "How to Grow Vegetables and Fruits by the Organic Method." First published in 1961, it has 925 pages covering edibles from basic tomatoes to exotic tamarind. It is a jewel you'd be wise to snap up in a used-book store or from an online book site such as AbeBooks ( http://www.abebooks.com).
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It's What's Inside That Counts
Some fruits flaunt their lusciousness. Red apples have a come-bite-me appeal. Purple grapes beckon from the vine, honey-dripping figs from the tree. But other equally fine edibles keep their charm a secret. The beautiful orange flesh of butternut squash is clothed in basic beige, the khaki trench coat of food.
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Warming Up to Iceberg Lettuce
They say you should never discard out-of-style clothes, because sooner or later they will be back in vogue.
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Upside Down? Downright Right.
Well-organized gardeners are always ready when the frost hits. Their basil has all been turned into pesto, their tomatoes are now tomato sauce. Good gardeners are well into the job of dressing the emptied beds with compost.
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At Season's End, a Second Life
Swashbuckling pirates were at work in our corn patch today. Corn season being over, my husband went out in the morning to chop the plants so they could be tilled under. With a sharp machete in one hand, he made vigorous back-and-forth strokes across every standing stalk, starting at the top and working his way down until each one had been cut into six-inch sections.
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A Tasty End-of-Season Send-Off
The red tide has ebbed. Tomato juice no longer dribbles down the trough from squeezing mechanism to bowl, or from ladle to jar. The pints of puree have all been put up and stored for winter soups and pasta sauces. The confetti of red skins and seeds has vanished from the kitchen counters. Still, in the garden the tomatoes soldier on. Before long, the shortening days will diminish their flavor and their vines will finally surrender to frost. But right now it's a good time to make panzanella.
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My Own Personal Europe
I used to wish that I lived in Europe. Not the real Europe, which is becoming more and more like here every day, but an eternal Europe of cobbled streets, with an open-air market in every village, a butcher and a baker on every block.
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A Fruit That Doesn't Make Demands
In late summer, the garden overflows with vegetables that must be watched carefully for their fleeting moments of glory: the corn before its sweetness fades, green beans before they toughen, tomatoes before they swell, soften and splatter the ground. Tomatillos, on the other hand, are patient and gradual in their path to ripeness, sparing the busy gardener any panic or haste.
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Gardening News & Articles