…and thorny, with a sort of silvery color. The flowers — if you’re lucky enough to get them — are violet-blue. They smell, too. Whether it’s a good smell or a bad smell depends on your nose. I started planting my 13-foot long bed with four cardoon plants, spaced equidistant. Between these, I added Redbor kale, which I had grown before. I knew it would give the border some height. To fill out the planting, I added flowering plants wi…
Leafy vegetable takes center stage as fall draws to a close. This kale does get top-heavy and I’ve staked mine with bamboo canes. Due to my haphazard staking job, the plants have fallen flat to the ground a couple times. But I’ve managed to right them in stages, doing it right after a rain when the soil is moist. One of the most impressive crops in my fall vegetable garden is a curly purple kale called ‘Redbor’….
Norma Norris, owner of Norris Berry Farm, with a bundle of just-harvested kale. When it comes to easy-care crops, kale tops the list. It thrives best in the cooler temperatures of the north, but gardeners in the south can do just as well with collards. Because it’s so easy to get a good harvest, market gardener Norma Norris of Monkton, VT, is often asked, “What do I do with kale?” Her answer is this flavorful salad. Norma…
Always on the lookout for cold-hardy, richly-flavored greens, and a sucker for anything billed as “popular in southern Italy”, I tried a new one this year. Spigariello liscia in early October. The plants have set a few buds that quickly opened to flowers, but it’s the leaves I’m after! The dusky blue leaves are soft like a puppy’s ear. Ready for steaming, braising, soups or stir fries….
…8217;s slogan: Eat Mor Chikin. I don’t know what I hate more: misspelled words or kale. The words are misspelled because, well, the slogan was written by cows. Chick-fil-A puts it this way on their web site: “In 1995, a renegade cow, paintbrush in mouth, painted the three words “EAT MOR CHIKIN” on a billboard. From that day forward, the burger-eating landscape would forever be changed. These fearless cows, acting in enli…
…nd what went into producing it. So how come I can’t have the right to know what’s in the food I buy in the store? That’s the goal of the Just Label It campaign, which last month submitted a record-breaking 1.1 million signatures to the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) in favor of labeling genetically engineered (GE) foods. And in polls by ABC, MSNBC, NPR, the Washington Post, Consumer Reports and others, consistently…
…e’re getting hard frosts. So I covered all the plants with hoops and GardenQuilt. They’ve been thriving in this little microclimate, which buffers them from temperature extremes than have ranged from 72 degrees to 18 degrees. Kale I could go on and on about my arugula but instead I’ll mention a couple other vegetables that I’m still harvesting fresh: cavalo nero (lacinata kale) is at its best (I think!) when blanc…
My house is on a fairly busy street, so I like to do something special with the strip of garden that borders the sidewalk. I plant tulip bulbs for a spring show, but summer is reserved for annuals. One of my most successful and unusual plantings was a “hedge” of Redbor kale and cardoons, shown here in early summer. I used white petunias to keep things interesting early on, while the kale and cardoons were getting started. In add…
Over the years, I have become a firm believer in the importance of fertilizing plants. One of my favorite pots this season (see plant list below) with two of the three fertilizers that I’m applying and one of my trusty watering cans. Over the years, I have become a firm believer in the importance of fertilizing plants. Now, when there’s a pest problem in my garden, I run for a fertilizer rather than a pest control. In most cases, I…
…o freezing a large amount of corn at one time (500 ears!) but fun to see how it was done in most farm kitchens 50 years ago! This second guide is geared to more modest quantities of corn. I usually do two freezing sessions of 100 ears each. That’s about as much as I can take at one time. I should say as much as we can take. It’s a job I couldn’t do solo. The shucking, de-silking, cooking, chilling, cutting and bagging all have to happen within a…