For the last few weeks, my 6 artichoke plants (8? 10? More? They’ve multiplied so much that I’ve lost count) have been going off. Each plant bears beautiful spiny buds of the Purple of Romagna variety, an Italian heirloom that’s said to be more tender than the typical green globe.
harvests
Every season, I let a few of my radish plants flower and seed. Some I leave to collect seed for next season, and some I leave to harvest the pods. Amid this tangled mess of vines is a handful of daikon radish plants — plants that had grown over 4 feet tall, full of little [...]
If there was any fruit that identified most with Southern California, that icon of buttery goodness would be the avocado. The Hass avocado, once an obscure cultivar, now accounts for 80 percent of the world’s avocado crop and 90 percent of California’s avocado crop, where San Diego leads the way with the highest number of [...]
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 [...]
Here we are, a whole season after the first onion seeds were sown, and those little specks have slowly grown into a bed of bulging, fragrant alliums. While onions can be harvested and eaten at any stage, the most satisfying part of growing onions is being able to pluck a fresh onion from the pantry [...]
For such a little tree, this thing sure pumps out a lotta lemons every winter! I harvested a hefty basket of lemons last week, and I didn’t even put a dent in my tree. I’m not sure how many pounds were harvested, but it did require two hands to haul the basket from the garden [...]
One day’s harvest over the weekend… Bidwell casaba melon, Japanese Summer Top cucumber, Purple Plum and White Hailstone radishes, Striata d’Italia zucchini, Red Zebra tomatoes, Sweet Chocolate bell peppers (the first ripe ones this season!), Poona Kheera cucumber, Strie Patisson Melange squash, and a pair of crisp golden apples. Now I just need to go [...]
