Category: Garden

  • Grow Up! Why You Should Try Vertical Gardening

    Grow Up! Why You Should Try Vertical Gardening

    Have you ever grown a pumpkin plant? Or a cucumber? Tomatoes?

    Then you know how wild these plants can be if left to their own devices. One day you have a nice little squash plant minding its own business, then seemingly overnight that nice little squash plant has completely overwhelmed the entire garden.

    Not only does this look messy, but it makes things a lot more difficult when you want to pick some beans and can’t even see the plants.

    I used to garden this way and just let the plants decide how and where to grow, but when you raise a lot of vining plants (winter squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, peas…), this can get pretty ugly pretty fast. So when we moved to our new place a few years ago and I got to start with a clean garden template, I decided to try my hand at vertical gardening. I’ve changed some things along the way, but there will be no going back to the old method for me: growing vertically is here to stay, and here are a few reasons why.

    Vertical Gardening - lifefromthegroundup.us

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  • Blue Berries Tomato

    If you are on the receiving end of seed catalogs or have been to your local farmer’s market lately, you’ve probably seen or heard of the Indigo series of tomatoes.

    These Indigos are a relatively new addition to the tomato family, and are becoming quite popular. For good reason too: they look pretty cool with their deep purple shoulders, and that dark purple comes from anthocyanin, a powerful antioxidant found in many dark fruits. And the best part is they were developed using traditional breeding techniques (no test-tube tomatoes for me, thank you), utilizing wild species that contained the anthocyanin genes.

    The first generations received mixed reviews: looked nice, but the flavor could be lacking, to put it mildly. Although in all fairness, the tasteless fruits may have just been picked too early. A recent addition to the mix is the Blue Berries tomato, which I decided to try this year after reading more favorable comments.

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  • Balsamic Roasted Green Beans

    Balsamic Roasted Green Beans

    Balsamic Roasted Green Beans

    We’re well into fresh-from-the-garden green bean season, and green beans are one of my favorites. My usual preparation involves steaming them for a few minutes then slathering them in fresh butter and a sprinkle of salt in order to get them on the table as quickly as possible!

    But occasionally, everyone needs a change of pace, so I recently tried these balsamic roasted green beans. Quite delicious, I  must say. The balsamic cooks down into a syrupy glaze, and there’s a subtle sweetness that emerges after spending some time in the oven that I don’t get from the standard steaming.

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  • Plated Landscape 2015

    Plated Landscape 2015

    For the fourth year running now, we’ve attended a Plated Landscape dinner put on by Chef Ben Bebenroth and Spice of Life Catering. This year’s event was made special by the fact that, not only was it the first dinner of the season, but it was the first one ever held at the Bebenroths’ new farm in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, christened Spice Acres.

    Beautiful, and no artificial colors!
    Beautiful, and no artificial colors!

    S and I were joined by most of our mushroom-hunting group from last year, as well as about 60 others. Pre-dinner festivities involved a beet-infused vodka cocktail, cucumber gazpacho, and mushroom-pork pot stickers, all enjoyed while resting on velvet couches placed upon a carpet of needles within the cozy confines of a small stand of old pines. With live music to boot.

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  • What Are Garlic Scapes?

    What Are Garlic Scapes?

    Garlic Scapes

    I told C the other day that we were going to have garlic scapes for dinner.

    He asked, “where is the garlic trying to escape to?”

    Probably not an uncommon response to a mention of garlic scapes. But while it certainly does look like the scapes are trying to escape, a garlic scape is simply the flowering part of the plant. If you’ve ever seen an onion or other allium in bloom, that’s kind of what this is like. The big difference from onions is that garlic scapes grow long and curly and people often pick them to eat.

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