Gardening

Microgreens are most often found in high-end restaurants and culinary publications. They have become synonymous with extravagance and “style-over-substance” cooking, but in reality they are dirt cheap to produce at home and an excellent way to inject fresh homegrown produce into your diet. I’ve also...

Oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus spp.) grow wild in both tropical and temperate forests all over the globe. They have likely been foraged by many cultures throughout history, but they were first intentionally cultivated by German soldiers who grew them on stumps in the forest during World War I. In...

When I finished my degree in biology in 2013, I decided that instead of getting a job at a laboratory or going to graduate school, I would get a hands-on ecology education by completing an apprenticeship at a research farm in rural North Carolina. I worked on the Small Farm Unit where we practiced...

When I discovered winter sowing, it was one of the biggest “aha” moments of my gardening life. I didn’t immediately understand the reasoning behind the method, but after a little research I distilled that its root goal is to allow natural processes to simply happen rather than forcing them. This...

An old Chinese saying holds that the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago and the second best time is today. Well, the same could be said about perennial vegetables. Now is a great time to add to your garden with perennial plants and give them a head start for the following year. Fall is often...

In 1816, dubbed “The Year without a Summer,” a massive volcano erupted in Indonesia and left a sulfuric haze floating around Earth’s stratosphere. The layer of smog partially blotted out the sun in the Northern Hemisphere, resulting in a sharp decrease in temperatures and crop failures across Asia...

As the summer heat gives way to crisp fall air in much of the country, the average vegetable garden is starting to fade in its brilliance. Our vibrant green rows of tomatoes are now sad, brown, and drooping with the last fruit of the season. Winter squash vines that once threatened to tear down...

When I was a kid, any time my sisters and I came down with a stomach bug, my mother ran to the store for a bottle of ginger ale. Though it looked like any other soft drink in a green plastic container, we were taking part in a tradition of plant medicine that dates back over 5,000 years. Gingerols...

As the name implies, brussels sprouts were first cultivated in what is now Brussels, Belgium, around the beginning of the 16th century. The fact that individual sprouts resemble tiny cabbages is no coincidence; they were originally bred from the exact same species as cabbage (Brassica oleracea). The...

It’s everybody’s favorite starchy staple crop. It can be found anywhere from a salad in a Syrian village to fast-food French fries in an American city, but this plant comes from humble beginnings as a slightly toxic wild mountain tuber. Potatoes were first transformed into their edible and delicious...

Archeological evidence suggests that garlic is one of the oldest crops in the world. It’s cultivation likely began around 5,000 years ago. References to garlic are found in ancient texts from India, Egypt, and China, and garlic bulbs have even been found in Egyptian tombs. Back then, garlic was...