About the Author
Georgeanne Brennan is a James Beard Award-winning author of numerous cooking and garden books. She lives in Northern California and France. Mimi Leubbermann is the author of a wide range of garden books, including Easy Orchids (0-8118-3553-7). She lives in Northern California. Faith Echtermeyer has created visuals for numerous cookbooks, travel books, and food and wine publications. She lives in California’s Napa Valley.

Bring them into your kitchen.

Core them.

Put them in boiling water for 2-3 minutes.

Transfer them into a bowl of ice water.

The skin just slides right off.

Holding the tomato in your hand,

Insert it into a large freezer ziplock bag

and squeeze!

Do this over and over with 10-12 tomatoes.

Then put in about a TBS canning salt.

Close the bag. Squeeze it around to mix it up.

Put it in the freezer.

Wala – tomatoes for the rest of the year for your soups, chili, and sauces!

• These gourmet lollipops come on foot-long bendable sticks, ideal for delicious floral arrangements & bouquets.
• 7 delicious flavors and sparkling see-through colors: Purple, Green, Blue, Pink, Red, Orange, and Yellow.
• Unit Price : $0.35/lollipop.
• Bag contains 120 cellophane-wrapped flower lollipops.

As it stands.. I have cucumbers growing outta my ears! I think I planted too many this year – going by the cucumbers-in-waiting that are still out there on the vine? I have enough to keep the entire neighborhood in cucumbers from now ’till Christmas! Fa la la la la la la la la!

Catnip is a perennial, and grows two to three feet. It is native to North America. In addition to cats, bees are also fond of Catnip. Make sure to leave PLENTY of room to grow catnip – - it will often overcrowd many of your other herbs, flowers or plants.

Grow Catnip plants from seed. Sow seeds into your garden in the spring. Space seedlings or thin plants to 20″ apart.

Catnip thrives in sun or partial shade. They prefer average, well drained soil over rich soils. They grow well with little attention, and will withstand crowding. Fertilizer is not usually required, except in the poorest of soils. We always recommend a little fertilizer at planting time, and a couple of times a year to promote maximum growth.

After the plants have grown a few inches, pinch back the shoots to promote bushy growth. It will first bloom in mid summer. After harvest, trim back the plants again. With luck, you will get three harvests in a season.

Aside from using it to drive your cats kooky – catnip has documented herbal remedy benefits: Used for reducing chickenpox and measle eruptions. Lowers fever. Useful herb for insomnia – even in children. Helps relieve digestive disturbances and stomach flus. This herb has a gentle carminitive action. An infusion is given to children and nursing mothers to help expel trapped gas. It also safely induces sleep without any grogginess the next morning.

Tops of plant are harvested and used as a tea or infusion. Sometimes used in combination with other herbs in tincture form. [Source]

Tags: Gardening, Garden, Herbs, Catnip, Growing+Catnip, Growing+Herbs, Herbal, Herbal+Remedy, Insomnia

This year, I chose to grow my strawberries in hanging baskets, as pictured above. I have 4 of those baskets hanging from the deck of my house.

If you choose to plant them in the ground – make sure that they aren’t planted in the same soil as tomatoes, peppers or eggplants… and that none of those vegetables have been planted in that soil for at least the past 3 years. (see why I do hanging baskets??)

My neighbor has one whole 50×50 space dedicated to strawberries. A farm down the street from us dedictates full acerage to strawberries. And here I am with my pathetic little hanging baskets! But! They produce really sweet, gorgeous berries all summer long and I love having them hang outside the kitchen so I can just step out and pluck a few to add to my yogurt or ice cream!

Grow in full sun all day and expect luscious berries in 3 months. They are BEAUTIFUL ornamental plants, which will dazzle your visitors. They should be spaced 10″ – 14″ apart depending on level of fertilization and plant size. Pajaro variety produces the largest plants requiring the greater planting distance,

Prune off all runners that develop the first season so all the energy is focused into fruit production. If the plants are not sized up when flower production starts, remove first flush of flowers. If berry production or plants are less vigorous in subsequent years, you may want to put in new plants in fresh soil to get that incredible vigor you witnessed the first year. Commercially, they are usually treated as annuals, even though; they are in fact, perennials

Along with the hanging baskets, I also have a couple of these on order to be delivered by the end of the week – - I’m keeping these right outside the patio doors to my kitchen:

Strawberry Planter

MMMMMM.. strawberries! If I had to pick a favorite plant in my yard – - this one might just be IT!

Tags: Garden, Gardening, Garden+Pests, Garden+Dust, Beans

One of those pieces of advice concerned garden pests and diseases that can hurt my plants. Mostly such insects as aphids, cabbage worms, harlequin bugs, bean beetles, Japanese beetles, stink bugs, thrips, and more. And diseases like bacterial spot, blights, and powdery mildew.

My natural question was, “Well, Garden Doctor Dad – how do I control these things?? Can I?”

He told me about a product called “Garden Dust” that he uses on his plants (and flowers) every year to keep the insects and diseases at bay. He told me to apply the garden dust the very MINUTE I start seeing holes in the leaves of my plants – - because that generally means there is some bug.. or two or three.. munching away at my precious vegetables and flowers!

Today, in my vegetable garden – I noticed that my pole bean plants had quite a few little holes munched in the leaves – - so, luckily, I had followed my Dad’s advice and purchased a few containers of Garden Dust. I went to the garage and got the container and ‘dusted’ all my plants in the garden.

Hopefully, this will now keep the little munchers at bay and AWAY from my plants!

A week later – they turned pure white, then they turned brown, dried out and withered away. I had to dig them up and replace them with new cucumber plants – which after a week are doing extremely well at the moment. They’re deep green and nice and perky in their new home.

But why did my old cucumber plants turn white?

I’ve found two possible scenarios:

1.) The soil is too nitrogen rich. When we prepared the garden – we mixed in rotted manure into the soil and planted the cucumbers in it – - along with vegetable slow-release fertilizer. This proved to be too much fertilizer with the manure and slow-release fertilizer combined. solution: when the plants died.. I dug them up.. made a large hole around the area and filled that hole with regular topsoil (non fertilized) then mixed that soil with the surrounding fertilized soil. This mixed in good nutrients, but decreased the nitrogen content of the surrounding soil. I then replanted the cucumbers.

2.) the very night I planted the cucumbers… it got down to 38 degrees overnight. While that is not freezing temperatures – there is a such thing as a ‘chilling injury’ that can occur in cucumber plants… in zones that are cooler. It happens in zones where the temperatures warm prematurely (in Wisconsin that would be early -mid April) – - then gardeners (like ME!) get anxious to plant and they go out and get their crops in the ground – - then the temperatures dip to an ‘almost’ freezing temperature.. but not quite freezing. The chilling effect occurs: “Exposure to chilling
temperatures results in increased ethylene production and leakage of cell membranes. The degree of chilling injury depends on the temperature, the duration of chilling, and other factors such as relative humidity and soil moisture. Because chilling results in cell leakage, damage to plants can stress tissues. These include loss of turgor (wilting or drooping leaves) and leaf scorch, appearing as a whitish ring around the leaf margins. Other symptoms include reduced growth rate after warming and plant yellowing.” [source]

So – my mystery white cucumbers may be solved with one, or both, of the solutions above. Either way – I replanted and they are currently doing extremely well – - let’s hope that continues throughout the season!

Here’s one of my absolute favorite garden recipes:

MARINATED TOMATO AND CUCUMBER SALAD
4 lg. tomatoes, cut into wedges
2 cucumbers, peeled & cubed
1 lg. Vidalia onion, peeled & sliced
1/2 c. olive or salad oil
1/4 c. cider vinegar
1 tbsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. oregano

Put prepared vegetables in large salad bowl. In smaller bowl combine remaining ingredients with wire whip until salt and sugar dissolve. Pour dressing over vegetables and let stand in refrigerator about 1 hour before serving for best flavor.

From the garden: Tomato, cucumber, vidalia onion, oregeno

From the grocery: Sugar, cidar vinegar, salt, olive oil

Man, I cannot wait!

Tags: Garden+Recipe, Tomato, Cucumber, Vidalia+Onion, Oregeno, tomato+cucumber+salad, salad