Search Results for: label/vegetable gardening

296 results

Rapini is the New Broccoli

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Vegetable Gardening
8 Comments
...names including broccoli rabe, broccoli raab, broccoletti, saag, broccoli di rape, cime di rapa, rappi, friarielli, and grelos. It’s a member of the brassica family and is closely related to the turnip. And, unlike most vegetables found in our supermarkets, it actually tastes like something, with a mustardy bitterness I really love. I planted about 18 square feet worth and Mrs. Homegrown and I have been eating it for weeks tossed in pasta,...

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That ain’t a bowl full of larvae, it’s crosne!

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Self Watering Containers, Vegetable Gardening
22 Comments
Mrs. Homegrown, justifiably, gives me a hard time for growing strange things around the homestead. This week I just completed the world’s smallest harvest of a root vegetable popularly known as crosne (Stachys affinis). Crosne, also known as Chinese artichoke, chorogi, knotroot and artichoke betony is a member of the mint family that produces a tiny edible tuber. While looking like any other mint plant, the leaves have no smell. The tubers...

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Hugo, humanure and nettles

Mrs. Homegrown
Composting, Reviews
10 Comments
...les; he examined the plants, which were uprooted and already dried, and said: “They are dead. Nevertheless, it would be a good thing to know how to make use of them. When the nettle is young, the leaf makes an excellent vegetable; when it is older, it has filaments and fibres like hemp and flax. Nettle cloth is as good as linen cloth. Chopped up, nettles are good for poultry; pounded, they are good for horned cattle. The seed of the nettle,...

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Nettle Mania

Mr. Homegrown
Food, Foraging, Herbal Medicine, Herbs
7 Comments
...erlin corespondent Steve Rowell for the photo). When dried, the leaves make a damn good tea, with a rich, indescribable flavor. If that ain’t enough, nettles pack a powerhouse of vitamins, minerals, and are perhaps the vegetable with the highest protein content (10%). At the risk of contradicting yesterday’s anti-media screed (After all, Marshall McLuhan once said, “If you don’t like that idea I’ve got others.”...

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Notes on Mark Bittman’s “Behind the Scenes of What We Eat”

Mrs. Homegrown
Events, Reviews, Thoughtstylings
3 Comments
...plants– is pretty much the same as Bittman’s recommendations.  (I wonder if Pollan and Bittman hang out? Maybe Bittman crashed on Pollan’s sofa during his west coast tour. You think?).  To whit: eat a ton of vegetables, eat low on the food chain. Cook! Don’t eat processed foods. Be willing to pay more for well-raised animal products–yes, they are more expensive, but really, they shouldn’t be cheap. Cheap animal...

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Maggots!

Mr. Homegrown
Composting, Gardening
RLeave a comment
...st pile it’s best to maintain a 50-50 ratio of carbon material to nitrogen materials. Carbon materials are essentially everything that is brown, like dead leaves, sawdust and dry grass. Nitrogen materials include fruit, vegetable scraps and coffee grounds. The type of pile you construct depends upon the materials you have available to compost. Becky had lots of grass and leaves on a fairly large piece of property and the three pile system s...

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Bean Fest, Episode 4: Frijoles Refritos

Mrs. Homegrown
Bean Fest, Food, Recipes
7 Comments
...me stuck) are simply cooked beans that are mashed in a frying pan along with some seasonings and fat. What makes them a little shady to the health conscious and vegetarian set is that they are traditionally fried in lard. But vegetable oil can be used just as well, and I’d add for the sake of fairness, that real, home cooked lard from well-raised pigs is not such a bad fat. For what it’s worth. To make refried beans you just need to h...

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Water Conservation

Mr. Homegrown
Water Conservation
RLeave a comment
...tart with water conservation is outdoors, in designing a landscape that doesn’t need supplemental irrigation. Our rule around the SurviveLA compound is, once again, if you gotta water it you gotta be able to eat it. The vegetables that we grow are irrigated with a water-saving drip irrigation system that we’ll describe in detail in a later post. We have no lawn, and other than the vegetable garden, all the other plants are either nati...

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Tomato Report II: Franchi Red Pear

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Tomatoes
12 Comments
...tomato called red pear by US Seed companies. Pear shaped with vertical ribs . . . Really meaty containing few seeds. Indeterminate. One problem I’ve had with it is that it’s not super productive, at least in my vegetable beds.  I also think I may have over-watered it this summer and, consequently, it’s not quite as flavorful as last year’s more “meaty” crop. So what beefsteak varieties do you like? I’...

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