Beans are thought to have been first cultivated alongside their sister crop, corn, around 7,000 years ago in what is now Mexico. Over thousands of years they made their way north on Native American trade routes with unique varieties developing along the way. Mature dry beans are packed with protein...

Around 10,000 years ago in what is now Southern Mexico, subsistence farmers began experimenting with a scrubby wild grain called Teosinte. Over generations they selectively bred for larger and larger starch-filled kernels until they developed the ubiquitous grain that we now call corn. Corn gets a...

Many of the tribes indigenous to North America have a variation of the Legend of the Three Sisters. The most widely recognized is the Haudenosaunee version in which three sisters (corn, beans, and squash) live together in a field and help one another survive. As the story goes: Very long ago, there...

On our homestead, we strive to create a flourishing ecosystem that supports wildlife, as well as our family. Most of our yard is filled with vegetables, fruit trees, and mushroom logs, but we also have a large pollinator garden and a brush pile in our food forest that provide habitat for native...

Radishes are the fast food of the gardening world. That's not because of poor quality or health code violations, rather due to the fact that many varieties are ready to harvest in less than a month from planting. This is a welcome deviation from the typically delayed gratification that vegetables...

Chives are one of the simplest plants to grow in your vegetable garden and they have the magical ability to elevate any boring-looking dish to a five-star masterpiece. As Danielle Prewett and many others have said, “We eat with our eyes first.” For that reason alone, chives are worth including in...

The white russet potatoes common in most U.S. supermarkets and fast-food restaurants literally pale in comparison to the diverse array of varieties found in the plant's home range of present-day Peru. Potatoes were most likely first cultivated by farmers in the Andes Mountains, where they fueled the...

Spring is here again in the Northern Hemisphere. For us vegetable gardeners, that means a big sigh of relief followed by a frenzy of activity preparing the garden for the upcoming growing season. Spring garden prep activities range from the practical, like pulling up hardy winter weeds, to the...

Once again it’s that wonderful time of year when plants begin to break dormancy, migrating birds return to their nesting sites, and every gardener is daydreaming about the possibilities of the upcoming growing season. If you’re brand new to growing food and planning to start a vegetable garden this...

Although most modern strawberry varieties are a far cry visually from their small-fruited wild cousins, they are actually a species native to the Americas. Strawberries were first cultivated by indigenous people on both the northern and southern American continents. However, the development of the...