If there were a prize for the most versatile vegetable, the scarlet runner bean would be a serious contender, even though it’s hardly a garden staple. It may be best known as a children’s plant. Kids are often encouraged to make a tepee out of bean poles and sow scarlet runners at the base of …
Lean, mean but decidedly green, my young friends were determined to rid their garden of tomato hornworms by picking them off rather than spraying them. “We killed the mothers!”, they exclaimed in triumph, and told how they’d sought out the fat green worms with rows of small white eggs on their backs. Unknowingly, they had …
Its name in Mexico, verdolagas, means “green lakes.” Up north it’s purslane, and as sure as the sun will rise to its zenith on June 21, purslane will appear in my garden and spread its verdant mats from shore to shore. It is the quintessential weed of summer, its vigor fed by warm, bright days …
When spring is in progress, gardeners converse in Fahrenheit. They cheer when the thermometer hits 50, crow when a sunny day breaks 60, commiserate over a drop to 40. But the number that should be on all lips is the temperature of the soil. Soil heat rises steadily in spring, but its progress lags behind …
On the first day of asparagus, those freshly picked spears are a welcome gift after a long winter. Elsewhere in the garden, early spring planting takes a while to show results, as potato stems break the soil surface, pea tendrils grasp their trellis netting, and the green fuzz of newly sown carrots appears in rows. …
Disconsolate, my friend trudged from one garden center to another. Not a parsnip seed to be found. I am sure he was able to order some from a catalog — half of those in my own stack offer a variety or two. But it is sad to see a stalwart old vegetable sink to obscurity, …
When I was growing up in New York City, we would often see apologetic signs in the middle of the street that read “Dig we must for a better New York.” Everyone knew that beneath the traffic lay an intricate network of phone lines, gas lines, water lines, electric lines and the great tubes of …
The slug, in theory, is a friend. It belongs to a class of animals, called detritovores, that feed on the detritus of the living world so that it does not pile up endlessly around us. Vegetation that is decaying, or has at least begun its downward descent from the prime of life is a slug’s …
It’s been 180 years since Thomas Jefferson’s American consul in Florence, Italy, Thomas Appleton by name, sent him some fennel to plant at Monticello. Jefferson did, and the crop has thrived over here in peaceful obscurity ever since. In California, where the climate is something like the plant’s native Mediterranean region, it has naturalized and …
There is nothing subtle about a sunflower. Poke a seed into the ground and a thick stalk will zoom up, with broad leaves at the sides and a huge flower on top, a gentle giant wearing a sporty grin and sending a message of affable openness. All pollinators welcome. All birds invited to supper. Sunflowers …
It’s dark in our root cellar in wintertime. Ideally, it’s a bit clammy down there too, as the temperature hovers around 33 degrees with a humidity of 90 percent. It smells earthy and maybe a little cabbagey — not a fun place to hang out. But grab a bucket and something from every bin, bring …
Gardeners sound like warriors when they talk about their weeds. After all, a grower’s reputation rests on having an adversary of stature, a foe worthy of one’s determination and skill. Don’t tell a Californian you envy her climate. Listen to her epic tale about battling wood sorrel. The green-thumbed Vermonter might acknowledge the leg-up he …
