Garlic scape (aka garlic flower) season is pretty near finished in my neck of the woods and I was sad to see it go. Yesterday I preserved the last of the scapes that I planned to harvest, leaving the rest to mature and produce bulbils that I will scatter about for next year (you can …
All of the books will tell you (even my own), that you should not allow your garlic plants to produce full flowers. Cut them off when they’re still closed (called scapes). And it’s true. If you want to grow big, juicy garlic bulbs you’ll need to cut off the scapes as they emerge in early …
I have a “stick them wherever they’ll fit” attitude towards onions, shallots, garlic, and leeks. While most edible alliums grow to be their biggest and best when the soil is rich and the sun is bright, I often start the season with more allium seedlings and sets than ideal space in which to plant them. …
Last night we enjoyed dinner at The Black Skirt, a Sicilian/Calabrian Italian restaurant here in Toronto. Before the meal, we were served slices of Italian loaf, as is the custom in most Italian restaurants. But where most restaurants tend to provide a plate of good quality olive oil for dipping, The Black Skirt offered something …
Garlic scapes are the immature, unopened flowers that form at the top of the plant’s leafy stalk in early summer. They have a delicate, garlic flavour and are much less potent than the bulb. In fact, I can’t eat much garlic raw or cooked, but I can devour garlic scapes aplenty with no stomach upset.
Yep, I’m behind. As always. No new story here. It is November 15 and I am yet to plant my garlic. I have been here before. In fact, there was that year that I didn’t get garlic in at all. As I write this, there is a total of six cloves in the ground. That’s …
The theme for this week is fruit. Fruit as a plant part as opposed to fruits such as strawberries and bananas, although you’ll notice some of those, too. It seems that fruit — some edible and some not — is forming in every corner of the garden. Flower diversity is still high, it’s just that …
This morning I took advantage of the mild weather to get some chores done in the garden. As I kneeled on the ground planting garlic I thought about my recent trip to Georgia. I arrived in Atlanta the day before the State was set to execute Troy Davis. I’d been following the case through online …
It was an insanely busy working weekend. Come Monday morning and I was desperate to unwind from the weekend, not the other way around. I still managed to get some time in most of the gardens, with the exception of the street garden, which is taking care of itself these days. Thankfully we got some …
Let us turn our minds back four months (almost to the day by coincidence) to April of this year. Way back then, in a season that felt not so much unlike this one in many ways, what with the rain and the fact that I was wearing rain boots and long sleeved shirts, and it …
Before I begin, a confession: I did not plant garlic last fall. You are horrified. You are storming away from this website in horror. Allow me to explain / make excuses. I managed to harvest my garlic early last fall and it was fantastic. The biggest and best garlic harvest we’ve ever had. I grew …
I was invited to an apartment warming at my brother’s newish place the other night and since I had already treated him to a whole new garden, hereby known as “The Gift That Covers Me Off for Gift Giving Until 2010,” I decided I wanted to bring something but that that something should be simple …