Harvest to Table

Autumn is a good time to begin preparing the kitchen garden for spring planting. Remove woody and diseased plant debris from the garden as soon as the harvest is complete–pull up tomato vines and beans and remove late cabbage, cauliflower, and broccoli stalks. Plant debris that is not diseased can be finely chopped and added [...]

Ready to stretch your growing season: get an early start in spring or keep the season going in autumn? Lettuce is your choice. Lettuce does not like warm days and nights, so the cool time of the year is lettuce season. You can lengthen your growing season dramatically with a lettuce box–that’s a cold frame [...]

Composting turns garden and kitchen waste into humus. Humus is Nature’s best fertilizer and soil conditioner. The process of decomposition that we call composting happens in nature as billions of microorganisms feed, grow, reproduce, and die as they recycle kitchen and garden waste. Compost will happen gradually over time. Set a pile of leaves or [...]

The combination of dead vegetation with air and moisture will result in compost. Composting is natural decomposition. Composting can take place in a simple free-standing heap of garden waste or a homemade wire-mesh container or a commercially made bin. Here are the basics you’ll need to know to start composting at home: • Site the [...]

A cold frame can keep plants 7° to 10ºF warmer than outdoors, sometimes as much as 20ºF warmer. Use a cold frame in spring to give seedlings a head start on the growing season and protect them from spring frosts. Use a cold frame in autumn to extend the summer and fall growing season into [...]

Use cloches and cold frames to extend the growing season, either in spring or autumn. When freezing temperatures are expected, most kitchen garden crops will benefit from protection. The simplest crop protection–a light blanket or overturned cardboard box–will protect plants by 1° or 2°F. A plastic or glass cloche, plastic tunnel, or simple cold frame [...]

Onions are a kitchen staple. Grow onions from seed, seedlings, or sets (small dry onion bulbs started the year before). Bulbing onions require 80 to 120 days to reach harvest. Green onions are harvested before they form bulbs, in 40 days or less. Spring onions form small, immature bulbs and are harvested in 40 to [...]

Early October is the right time to begin thinking about the coming frost and cold weather. How will you extend the season if your summer crops are not yet ready for harvest? Many warm-weather crops and all cool-weather crops can withstand the first or second or even third frost with a little protection. Extending the [...]

You can freeze extra tomatoes for use in winter. Frozen tomatoes are best used in cooked dishes as freezing will cause them to lose their firmness. Here are two ways to freeze tomatoes: ● Place whole or peeled tomatoes in a plastic freezer bag and freeze. (To peel a tomato, place it in a strainer [...]

The name October comes from the Latin word for eight, “octo”. October was the eighth month in the Roman calendar. That all changed in the sixteenth century when the Gregorian calendar was adopted. Now, October is the tenth month. The whole reason for changing the calendar came with the notion of bringing the calendar into [...]