Pea Picking: The best way to tell when peas are ready is to pick and taste each day until they are just right. The best tasting peas are young, sweet, and tender. The best way to tell when peas are ready is to pick and taste each day until they are just right. Then harvest.
When the soil in your garden warms to 45ºF (7ºC), you can plant peas—snap, snow, and shell. Peas are tasty shelled from the pods and used raw in salads. You can steam peas as a vegetable, or cook them in soups and stews. Peas prefer cool weather. They mature in about 60 days. So time
There are more than 2,000 varieties of peaches. That’s a lot to choose from. There is no better way to pick a peach (and spend a day) than taste testing peaches at your local farmers market. There is a favorite peach taste for everybody. To find the best peach, first take a whiff: a ripe
Half a peach poached in syrup served with a scoop of vanilla ice cream topped with raspberry purée: peach Melba. Barely chilled peach slices served with sugar and cream: peach Mom. Auguste Escoffier—the most famous chef of his time–created peach Melba in 1892 in honor of the Australian opera singer Nellie Melba. Peach Mom has
Peppers–sweet and hot–are native to the tropics. They require much the same cultural treatment as tomatoes, except that peppers are perhaps a bit more tender. The easiest way to start peppers is to buy transplants at the garden center. If you start peppers from seed outdoors, sow seeds in pots in mid-spring for transplant in
Slice the persimmon down to the stem base once and then twice and lay it open like a flower. You can then enjoy its delightfully sweet and cool flesh spoonful by spoonful. Some say the persimmon has a pumpkin flavor mixed with allspice and cinnamon. You will surely find it exotically sweet and very juicy.
A flavor somewhere between pineapple and strawberry: this is how you might describe the pineapple guava, also called feijoa (fay-YOH-ah). This is a high-altitude South American native that has an oval fruit about 3 inches (7 cm) long. It has a granular cream-colored flesh with a jelly-like center filled with tiny seeds. It sometimes is
The flesh of the pineapple is sweet and juicy and is best eaten raw in slices, wedges, or cubes. Cut a fresh pineapple in half lengthwise, leaving on the top leaves. Cut out the core and carefully cut the flesh away from the rind in one piece. Slice the flesh into wedges. Refill the shell.
Piquant is a flavor that can be spicy, tart, or pungent. In this recipe that combines wax beans with chopped pimiento, Tabasco, Worcestershire sauce, and dry mustard, I think we are on the border between spicy and pungent. The wax bean is a pale yellow variety of green bean. Sometimes called yellow snap bean, the
Think about plant root growth when planning your garden. Be sure your planting beds contain plenty of organic materials such as compost and decomposed leaves to ensure strong root and plant growth. Plant roots require loose, well-drained soil for optimal growth. Vegetable and fruit crops require strong, healthy roots to be most productive and most
