Search Results for: label/vegetables

168 results

Remember to Label Those Jars!

Mr. Homegrown
Food, Food Preservation
10 Comments
“Label, label, label!” This was one of the most important lessons I learned in my Master Food Preserver training. You’ll note, from the jars above, that I’m not very good about this. When were those jars canned and what’s in them? I have no idea. They were probably the result of some late night canning frenzy two years ago. At the time I probably thought to myself, “I’ll label them in the morning.”...

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Straw Bale Garden Part V: Growing Vegetables

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Straw Bale Gardening, Vegetable Gardening
6 Comments
It’s too early to call my straw bale garden a success but, so far, the vegetables I planted in the bales are growing. I got a late start on planting–I put in the tomatoes, squash and basil in mid May/Early June–just in time for the cloudy, cool weather we have here in early summer. Check out the difference between the tomato I planted in a bale on the left, compared with a tomato in one of my raised beds. The tomato in the ba...

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How To Freeze Fruits and Vegetables

Mr. Homegrown
Food, Food Preservation
11 Comments
Photo by Flickr user leibolmai Freezing foods is just about the most boring food preservation method. It’s also the easiest and best way to preserve nutrients. But, when it comes to freezing fresh vegetables from the garden there is one important step: blanching. Blanching slows down enzymatic activity that can deteriorate the quality of what you freeze. How much to blanch depends on the vegetable in question. Thankfully there’s a ha...

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Vertical Vegetables

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Self Watering Containers, Thoughtstylings, Vegetable Gardening
6 Comments
...ems in a recent article, “Gardens That Grow on Walls.” For certain plants vertical growing might work. I haven’t tried it, but this DIY vertical succulent garden in Sunset Magazine certainly is striking. But vegetables? Their roots need space and you’d need to do a lot of watering to keep a vertical vegetable wall happy. But growing vertically does not have to mean attaching roots to a wall. I can think of two simple vert...

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Looking for the Union Label

Mr. Homegrown
Domesticus
3 Comments
We’ve got a bad case of Ohrwurm, a German expression translated as “earworm” and used to describe a song stuck in your head. Our earworm came after a search for union made socks and underwear on the internets recalled a highly catchy ad jingle from the roller disco era, “Look for the Union Label” (youngsters can watch it on youtube here). We looked for the union label and we were surprised to find it via a company c...

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Perennial Vegetables

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Vegetable Gardening
12 Comments
For lazy gardeners such as ourselves nothing beats perennial vegetables. Plant ‘em once and you’ve got food for years. For novice gardeners, perennials are plants that, unlike say broccoli (an “annual”), don’t need to be replanted every spring. The best known perennial vegetable in the west is probably asparagus which, given the right conditions, will produce fresh stalks for years. But there are many thousands more...

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Reseeding Vegetables for the Warm Season

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening
13 Comments
...uit usually does not take up heavy metals). Still, I think bio-activity in the soil in the form of microorganisms and plants will, over a very long period, help remediate that contamination. More and more, I’m drawn to vegetables that easily re-seed themselves and grow without any fuss. And knowing when to plant things can be tricky, so watching nature’s own timing can provide important clues. I’ve taken to moving some of these...

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Which fruits and vegetables should I buy organic?

Mrs. Homegrown
Food
11 Comments
Want the rest? You’ll have to visit the site. Mrs. Homegrown here: My recent post about tomatoes reminded me that I needed to post this–I’ve been meaning to for a while.  The Environmental Working Group’s 2011 Shopping Guide has a listing of foods most contaminated with pesticides, and those least contaminated: the Dirty Dozen and the Clean Fifteen. Keeping this list in mind help you make choices as to where layi...

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Why I Grow Vegetables From Seed

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Seeds
23 Comments
Chard destined for failure On the last day of a vegetable gardening class that Kelly and I just finished teaching at the Huntington, we needed to demonstrate how to transplant seedlings. The problem was that we didn’t have any seedlings at home ready to transplant, so I had to make a trip to a garden center. That sorry errand reminded me why I grow from seed. All of the seedlings at the nursery were uninteresting varieties and ro...

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Grow Italian!

Mr. Homegrown
Gardening, Vegetable Gardening
RLeave a comment
...s (sorry to rub it in). Since the climate here is like southern Italy, we like to plant Italian varieties. Which brings us to the source of many of our seeds at the Homegrown Evolution compound, Seeds from Italy. Italians dig vegetables, and the offerings of the Franchi Co., which the folks at Seeds from Italy import, show a tremendous diversity of species and varieties. Why grow the same boring vegetables supermarkets carry anyways? Also, Ital...

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