This is one of those conflicting things about gardening in Austin: the seasons don’t always match what we have growing in the garden. I mean, why can’t cilantro be nice and grow in the summer when we want to use it with all those beautiful tomatoes and chiles in our salsas and ceviches? And why do salad greens grow best in the dead of winter More
Our second annual New Year’s Eve dinner and dance party turned out to be delicious and fun. It stared with a bit of work, as planned, cleaning the garden as best as possible and harvesting things we wanted to use or needed to be picked. I grabbed some of the ‘Early Wonder’ beets, which have proven to be some of my favorites. The roots are More
It’s that time of the year…the weather is (mostly) chilly, the garden needs to be cleaned and harvested, and there are presents to make for friends. I started last week, picking up most of the peppers before the hard freeze: serranos, jalapeños and Hungarian Hot. With the serranos and jalapeños I made traditional rajas en escabeche, the classic Mexican pickled chiles with onion, garlic, carrot More
A few days ago I woke up to a thin layer of frost on the grass…worried about the tomatoes, I rushed outside to check on everyone. To my relief, all is well. Both plants are loaded with fruit in different stages of growth. The larger ‘Super Fantastics’ are beginning to blush, and I actually picked two that were not fully ripe but beginning to crack More
Willy gave me my Key lime tree for Valentine’s long time ago, when it was a little sapling about one year old. The first year it gave me 2-3 limes, the next year a few more. Now it is producing heavily and has done so continuously for months. I figure it must be at least 8 years old and fully mature. We have transplanted it More