I admit it — if fava beans weren’t so good for the soil, I likely wouldn’t grow them at all, edible or not. Hidden inside those fat long pods are handfuls of delicious beans, but they make you work for it. Really work for it. Shelling the beans is a labor-intensive process, one that should [...]
Leguminosas
Legumes have long been known to be good for your garden by fixing nitrogen and improving soil fertility. These legumes come in the form of common peas and beans, as well as cover crops that act as green manure in the off season. But how exactly do they “fix” nitrogen in the soil, and what [...]
After an abundant summer, my bush beans have finally bitten the dirt. I harvested the last of the beans — all 15 pounds of my Dragon Tongue, Royal Burgundy, and Beurre de Rocquencourt varieties — and after many three bean summer salads, spicy stir-fried beans, grilled beans, braised beans, and buttery bean casseroles, there’s only [...]
Last week, I came home to an overflowing garden after spending five days in the mountains. I’m convinced that as soon as I leave town and stop “supervising” my veggies, they decide to have a growth spurt overnight. That ginormous squash? I swear that it wasn’t there the week that I left. But when I [...]
My chickens free-range in the backyard most of the day, with unrestricted access to the vegetable garden. I don’t fence or otherwise protect my raised beds, and they’ve been very good about our unspoken “beaks off” policy when it comes to my vegetables. The trick? Giving them a “salad bar” that they can call their [...]
I started pulling some of my fading summer crops the other week, including what was one of my favorite plants of the whole season — the delicious and distinctive Dragon Tongue bush bean (Phaseolus vulgaris), a Dutch heirloom introduced in the 18th century. I admit that I have a bias for purple plants in the [...]
It seemed like only yesterday that my Golden Sweet snow peas were thriving and producing handfuls of bright, translucent yellow pods that intertwined up my six-foot trellis. And then today, the vines have withered… the tiny buds no longer flowering… all the plants have just naturally collapsed under the weight of their saggy, unripened pods, [...]
