“I like food, food tastes good.” – Descendents
The food that we grow ourselves is special and its only natural to want to honour the work you put into it by making something spectacular. In this section you’ll find information on preparing, cooking, preserving, canning, storing, eating, and using edible plants.
Probably my favourite part about giving presentations and running workshops is the one-on-one chatting that happens with fellow gardeners and aspiring gardeners afterward. I love those moments connecting directly with other people who share the same excitement and passion. I love hearing about what they’re doing and the look of satisfaction on their faces is …
Wondering what to do with the various and sundry bits that remain in the late season garden? Join me on Twitter tomorrow night where I’ll be guest hosting Seed Chat for an hour on the topic of preserving the harvest. Be sure to pre-submit your question through the Seed Chat form to ensure that your …
Lemongrass (Cymbopogon citratus) has been making a yearly appearance in my garden in some way or another for some time now, but never like this. My new yard’s sun and sandy, well-draining soil turned out to be the perfect place to grow the sort of plant I have only seen in the tropics. Until now.
The tomato season is ending quickly. As of today, I don’t foresee many more ripe tomatoes coming off of the vine. I’ve had a good run: 110 lbs of ripe fruit in all! This was my first year weighing the harvest, so while I can’t make an accurate comparison to previous years, I think it …
The concept is so simple I wish I had thought of it: take the throw-away tomato skins that are left-over in the preserving process and make them into something useful. Something other than compost. With over 80 lbs of tomatoes (and counting) harvested from my garden this year, it is safe to say that I …
No doubt if you are growing even one sage plant this year, chances are great that you have enough of this strong herb to flavour a Thanksgiving stuffing so enormous that the Guinness People wouldn’t even bother showing up to authenticate its title. It would win a placement in the book and keep placing now …
They’re here! The slicing tomatoes are here! Yeah, sure, we’ve been enjoying the bite-sized determinates since June, and they are good. I won’t deny that they have been swell. The first two Caprese salads of the season were dynamite. I will never forget them. But in all honesty, what started this weekend is The Show. …
This pretty blue flower is shoofly aka Apple of Peru (Nicandra physalodes), a strange solanum that I am growing for the first time this year. I purchased the seeds last year at the Montreal Seedy Saturday but was unable to grow them as I quickly ran out of space. I’m STILL trying to find space …
The new yard came with violets… lots and lots of violets. They’re blooming now and even though the yard continues to look like the excavation site of a dead body on a television police procedural… I’m in heaven. I have longed to have the space to grow enough violets to make cheerful springtime jellies. A …
I grew up in a household that frequented thrift shops out of necessity, and like many kids in that economic bracket I was deeply embarrassed by our sorely out-of-date second hand outfits and household goods. Somehow between ages 14 and 16 and I did a mental 180° and found myself embracing thrifting as a lifestyle …
My final Globe and Mail article for the 2010 growing season was on growing and eating cardoon. Cardoon is lesser-known relative of the artichoke that is considered a delicacy in Mediterranean cuisine. Like artichokes it grows into a stately and somewhat dangerous thistle-like plant, but unlike artichokes you eat the stems, not the flower buds. …
When it comes to dealing with an end of season garden glut I have one rule: everything roasted. I am yet to find a vegetable or fruit that doesn’t benefit from this treatment. I thought I’d tried it all and there were no more surprises left. I was wrong. Last weekend I pulled out almost …