Gardening

Now that you have collected your old-last year’s seeds we are going to test them to see if they will grow. This is what the big time growers do, and what we do, but on a smaller scale in the kitchen.

Buying new seeds each year is very costly and perhaps not necessary if you have left over seed from last year, or even five years ago. This discussion focuses on seed companies and proven/disproven results, seed storage and of course making money by saving your own non-hybrid heritage seeds. Marketing ideas are also discussed.

It is very convenient to drop by the grocery these days and pick up a head of California – New Mexico lettuce. Some lettuce is trucked in from Mexico, or other Central American countries. Modern transportation systems are great, yet from the commercial grower’s standpoint they must raise the variety that is the toughest to […]

Last March I cleaned out the root cellar located over the springhouse and selected some nice large beets, parsnips, salsify, red chard, turnips, carrots and scorzonera. Averaging about six roots each, I replanted them in the garden to produce seed in the fall.

There are many considerations for the health conscious gardener besides lacing the cabbage patch with poisons. The foremost consideration in the selection of cabbage seed, besides the seasonal varieties, is to consider the resistance to insect attack. Many insect resistant strains have been developed, yet the insects themselves may adapt to living conditions in one […]

Brassica oleracea capitata, cabbage for short, has been grown by man before recorded history, probably going back to Abel of Biblical times. Wild open leaf cabbage can be cultivated into kale, and the incurving leaf plants can be cultivated into heading plants.