Food Gardening

So, you’ve planted tomato seeds (Part 1) and are nurturing them along with appropriate levels of light and water (Part 2).  If you followed my advice and planted two or three seeds in each growing cell, you will likely have two or more seedlings coming up in each cell.   You may have to brace…

If you’ve followed all of the steps in part one of this tutorial, you will now have baby tomato plants, each with two little leaves:   Sometimes the seed will still be stuck on the leaf, but don’t worry about it. These aren’t true leaves, but cotyledons, and they help to feed the plant until…

I don’t believe that growing tomato plants from seeds is the best way for new gardeners to get into gardening (read my plea for new gardeners to buy seedlings for first year or two here). But, once you’ve mastered starting with sturdy seedlings and growing the plants on to full maturity, it’s a lot of…

One of the first edible things you can pick in the garden each year is rhubarb. I usually start harvesting mine in late May or early June and, if I keep picking so that the stems don’t get too big and woody, continue into August. I never pick all of the stalks–I’ve read that you…

Tomatoes are often the very first vegetable most gardeners try to grow, and who can blame them—there’s nothing like the taste of a freshly grown, ripe tomato from your own garden. While there can be challenges, overall, tomatoes are a pretty easy plant to grow—they’re a good (and tasty!) choice for new gardeners of all…

In an ideal world, our plants would never have a blemish and would produce bumper crops continuously.   I do my best to practice good garden hygiene, taking any dying or diseased leaves and stems out of my garden throughout the season, and for tomatoes, being sure to remove the old plants at the end…

I manage the growth of my tomato plants in order to keep them growing on one or two main stems. Left to their own devices, tomato plants will produce many branches, flop over, and become a tangled mess. This isn’t good for the condition of the fruit–it will rot more easily on the ground, and…

Garlic is one of the easiest foods to grow. Just drop a clove in the ground, provide minimal care, and some time later—out comes a full head of garlic. In this post, I’ll take you step by step through the process. Or, for the quick version, watch this video: Still with me? Great–read on! Garlic…

Garlic is really easy to grow—you plant it in the fall and then just keep it watered and weeded until harvest, except you do have one task to complete right about now. And that’s chopping off those curly things that have formed at the top of the garlic plants. Those are called scapes. Essentially, they’re…