I cook because I love to eat. I garden because I love to cook.
Warm, ripe summer tomatoes. Sweet, crisp sugar snap peas in spring. Spicy fall arugula. Crunchy, sweet carrots as winter approaches. Herbs as a garnish to shower over a dish before it’s ready to serve. All from my garden. Fruits, leaves, roots. All delicious. But as …
Overabundance in the garden is a problem I can deal with. To even use the word ‘problem’ is a stretch. Nonetheless, when there is too much of a given crop in the heart of its harvesting season, the gardener must find a way to use …
When our contractor was rebuilding our porch one spring after the old rotting one almost ripped away from our house in an ice storm the previous winter, I had just added a 4 x 4 foot raised bed of strawberries to the garden. The porch …
I can only imagine what it would have been like for my ancestors – both the caveman types thousands of years ago, wherever they were, and those just over a century or so before, in little villages somewhere in what is now Ukraine. After a …
While the height of gardening season is late spring through the end of summer, gardening is really a 12-month-a-year sport. Yes, summer tomatoes may be the star of the show for many gardeners, but there is bounty to be harvested virtually all year long if …
The story of Jimmy Nardello’s peppers is an immigrant tale. Giuseppe and Angella Nardello arrived from southern Italy in the late 1800s, immigrating to Naugatuck, Connecticut. With them they brought seeds from their Italian garden, including a sweet frying pepper. They grew these peppers to …
It’s been a doozy of a summer. Unbearably hot and humid on Long Island, where I live, we have been forced to use the air conditioner much more than usual. A passing hurricane this week, which fortunately did not amount to much, made things even …
As the summer heats up, the cucumber vines in my garden lengthen, with yellow blossoms at their ends. There are male and female flowers, the females with tiny fruit just below the petals. Over a week or two, the fruit grows, enlarging into a full …
There are some vegetables I don’t grow in my garden. It’s not for lack of trying or because I won’t eat the result. Rather, I just can’t get them to grow. I try for a few years. Nothing. Modify my technique. Failure. Finally, I give …
Asparagus, a perennial that returns year after year if properly cared for, is one of my most cherished crops. Last year in late spring, when the harvest was over and the plants were maturing, sending their frilly leaves out to collect sunlight to transport food …
