Use mint fresh or dried to flavor vegetables—cabbage, carrots, cucumbers, eggplants, peas, potatoes, tomatoes, and zucchini. You can add fresh mint to cold and hot soups and beverages. There are all types of mint to choose from: spearmint, peppermint, pineapple mint, orange bergamot, and apple mint to name a few. Mint has a striking aroma
Serve guava slices on pancakes or waffles in the morning. In the evening, pair guava slices with a mild white cheese for dessert. You can even put guava slices in a baggy and send them to school or work in place of a candy bar. The guava has the sweet flavor of a strawberry or
Cool-weather crops in early autumn Mid- to late-summer is an ideal time to plant a second-season vegetable garden that will come to harvest in fall. Hardy, cool-weather crops are well suited for the second-season garden. Cool-weather crops like to get their start in warm soil and come to maturity when days and nights are cool.
Brandywine heirloom tomato Do heirloom tomatoes (or other heirloom vegetables, for that matter) have benefits or advantages when compared to hybrid tomatoes. The answer is not simple. The Natural Selection of Tomatoes Most of the crops we eat today, including tomatoes, have evolved from less desirable wild plants. Over generations and generations, humans have selectively
Hollandaise sauce is a smooth rich creamy sauce thickened by the use of egg yolks. Use hollandaise sauce as a topping for asparagus, broccoli and other vegetables. Hollandaise and mayonnaise are very similar—the fats are the difference: hollandaise uses butter; mayonnaise uses vegetable oil. One of the earliest recipes for hollandaise appeared in a French
Cremini mushrooms Cremini mushrooms have a rich, nutty flavor. They are dense and meaty. When cremini mushrooms are fully mature they are called portobellos. Cremini mushrooms should not be confused with all-white button mushrooms. The cremini has a brownish cast and twice the flavor of a cultivated white mushroom. The peak season for mushrooms harvested in
Crop rotation is the practice of changing or alternating the crops in a given area of the garden. Rotating crops will stem the depletion of soil nutrients and prevent or reduce the build-up of pest and disease problems. Crops that are heavy feeders and require more soil nutrients can be rotated with light feeders and
The cubanelle sweet pepper is tasty lightly roasted and served on a summer sandwich or green salad. Core and seed three or four of the long tapered cubanelles and place them on the grill or about five inches below the oven broiler element and cook until the skins blister and char on each side, about
Spotted cucumber beetle Cucumber beetles—spotted and striped—eat a variety of crops, not just cucumbers. Cucumbers, corn, lima and snap beans, melons, peas, pumpkins, potatoes, sweet potatoes, peanuts, eggplant, tomatoes, summer and winter squash—cucumber beetles feed on more than 280 plants. They feed on leaves and flowers and tunnel into fruit; early in the season they
Cucumbers–natives of India–love warm weather. Wait until soil and air temperatures averages 70°F each day before sowing or transplanting cumbers to the garden. While warm temperatures are required for growing, cucumbers require a relatively short season–55 to 60 days from sowing to harvest. In long-season regions, you can plant successive crops. In cool or short-season
