We are still harvesting quite a few greens out of our garden, despite the slushy weather. We have kale, arugula, pea shoots, and mache, but I am most excited about the broccoli rabe. I sowed it in late August, set a hoop house over the bed and covered it with a lightweight row cover (primarily to keep our chickens from snacking on the greens, but also to protect them from cooler weather). Broccoli rabe is, big surprise, in the broccoli family (brassica), but  it is actually more closely related to turnips, which are called rapa in Italy. The leaves resemble turnip leaves and share their strong, slightly bitter flavor.

Broccoli rabe is a fabulous green for fall and winter gardening, because it is edible at every stage. I thinned out the plants when they were just a few inches tall and tossed them into salads. The leafy foliage has a pleasant mustard-y flavor that grows stronger as the plants age. And best of all, broccoli rabe develops small, delicious, broccoli-like heads. The heads are ready for harvest in just under a month in warmer weather, but in fall and winter they form more slowly.

When they first emerge, the heads are tightly packed and compact. With in a few days though, they begin to loosen up and lengthen, and eventually the buds open to reveal bright yellow blossoms. Ideally, you want to harvest when the heads are tightly packed. Just clip the plant off near the soil line, stem, leaves and all.

Broccoli rabe tastes slightly bitter raw. So I often blanch the greens in hot water first, pat them dry, and then saute them with olive oil and garlic. If you miss the ideal harvest window (which sometimes only lasts a couple of days, especially in warmer weather), no worries. The yellow blossoms are slightly sweet and slightly spicy and definitely delicious. Experiment with adding them into stir fries or eat them in salads.

I’m growing ‘Super Rapini’ from Renee’s Garden, but Seeds from Italy offers a great selection of Cima di Rapa (Italian for broccoli rabe). They currently stock 8 varieties, including ‘Sesantina’ which develops larger than average heads.

Also, I hope you will all hop over to Ashley English’s lovely blog, small measure. She kindly reviewed my book and is giving away a copy! All you have to do to enter is a leave a comment with your favorite thing to grow and something you’d like to try.

One of my favorite Thanksgiving traditions is to make at least one dish with homegrown food from our garden. Near the end of summer, I planted purple Brussels sprouts in the hopes that they would be ready for Thanksgiving, but I got the seedlings into the ground a bit late and the sprouts are still teensy tiny. Oh well! We luckily have lots of greens and herbs to harvest for the meal.

I planted in arugula in late August and it is now the perfect size for a fresh salad. The leaves are about the size of my palm, very tender and peppery without being overpowering.

I am thinking about using the arugula as a base for a salad that is studded with candied hazelnuts, blue cheese and chunks of heirloom apple. But my mom doesn’t love blue cheese, and since she and my dad are our guests this year, I am also considering making a super simple salad of just arugula, shaved parmesan, toasted walnuts and a lemon vinaigrette.

Incredibly the ‘Rainbow Lacinato’ kale that I planted in March is still going strong eight months later. This is a seriously amazing variety. It just keeps growing and growing and growing! The tall stalks recently tipped over, but were nearly five feet tall before they fell. Jon is a vegetarian, so I always like to make a special main dish for him to enjoy along with all of the vegetable based side dishes. Rather than serve stir fried or braised kale, which we eat on a weekly basis, I am going to make a savory tart stuffed with with roasted vegetables, narrow ribbons of kale, and gruyere cheese.

It may have been a bad year for tomatoes, but it was a great summer for onions. We harvested tons of ‘Walla Walla Sweey’ onions in late summer and I set aside the biggest ones to use for Thanksgiving. They will find their way into our cornbread dressing, the tart mentioned above, and I’m sure other dishes as well.

In my Seattle garden I had a huge ‘Berggarten’ sage plant. I was very sorry to leave it when we moved because it was so beautiful and produced an endless supply of leaves that are perfect for cooking with. I planted a new ‘Berggarten’ sage in my Portland garden, but it is seriously unhappy in the spot I chose. The chickens dug it up on more than one occasion this summer and the soil doesn’t drain well. Even though the plant is pouting, there are still enough leaves to make Mark Bittman’s prosciutto wrapped sweet potatoes!

I am so excited to cook for Thanksgiving and share the meal with my parents and our good friends. I’m putting the finishing touches on the menu this week and am curious what will be on your table next week that comes from your garden?

It is green tomato season in my garden. I have a huge (HUGE!) grafted ‘San Marzano’ tomato plant. It produced tons and tons of ripe tomatoes, but there are still nearly 50 green tomatoes on the vine. With frost predicted later this week, it is time to pick these green beauties and bring them indoors. I could just compost the whole plant and be done with it, but I think that ripening tomatoes inside is totally worth the effort because it prolongs the homegrown tomato season into November.

Today in my Re-Nest column I detail how to ripen the tomatoes off the vine. Of course, I also like to cook with green tomatoes, too! If you’re looking for ideas beyond fried green tomato sandwiches, check out my roundup of green tomato recipes. You’ll find recipes for green tomato chutney, enchiladas, soup and even cake!

I love to grow my own garlic because it is such an imminently edible plant. You can harvest the young leaves in early spring and use them like chives, pull the garlic when it is very young and looks like a scallion, eat the delicious flower buds called scapes, and enjoy green garlic (immature heads where the cloves are still fused together) and of course the mature bulbs. The only problem with garlic is that it has a loooong growing season. You plant it in fall (October is a universally good time to plant garlic pretty much anywhere in the United States) and you don’t harvest the mature heads until the following June or July. If you have a small garden, this means you must choose where to plant garlic very carefully. Or, you can plant it in containers.

I first saw garlic planted in containers at my friend Robin’s house. Robin is a garden coach and she has access to a never ending supply of large plastic containers that trees come in. She uses these free containers garlic planters and gets amazing yields! The key with growing garlic in containers is to make sure the container has plenty of drainage and that you use a good soil-less potting mix (I like Black Gold). Taking these two steps helps ensure that the bulbs do not rot in soggy soil. This past weekend I planted garlic in three of my vintage wooden crates, but I’ve noticed garlic growing in half barrels, contractor buckets, and ceramic containers.

You can read my step-by-step guide to planting garlic in containers over at my column at Re-Nest. But I thought I’d share a few of my top tips here:

Grow hardneck varieties. This type of garlic produces tasty scapes (softneck types, which you typically find in grocery stores, do not make scapes). I would grow garlic for the scapes alone, because they make the world’s best pesto.

Plant the pointy end up. When growing garlic you plant a single clove and it will turn into an entire head. Be sure to plant the flat end down and the pointy end up. Roots will emerge from the base of the clove and green shoots from the tip. The shoots may die back over the winter if they are exposed to super cold weather, but don’t fret. They will re-grow in the spring.

Buy local garlic. Like so many vegetables, garlic adapts to the conditions that it grows in. You will have the best success, and typically the healthiest, tastiest garlic, if you buy heads from a local farmer at a farmer’s market. Ask the farmer which varieties do best in your climate and plant an assortment so you can choose which variety tastes best to you.

Today over at Re-Nest I share 3 of my very favorite  small, family owned seed companies: Wild Garden Seeds, Kitazawa Seed, and Seeds from Italy. You can click right here to read more about why I buy seeds from each of these three companies, but I thought it also might be fun to name some of my favorite varieties here.

Wild Garden Seeds

‘Purple Peacock’ broccoli. Amazing cross between broccoli and kale. You can eat everything on this plant and it survives the winter in the Pacific Northwest. Fabulous!

‘Survior’ Italian parsley. A great, long lasting and  cold tolerant parsley with a nice taste.

‘Triangle Flashback’ calendula. This beautiful calendula is nothing like the garden variety orange one that is so common. It has tons of tapered petals and looks almost like a strawflower. Stunning on salads.

‘Delicata Zeppelin’ winter squash. This wonderful, delicious delicata squash has a great story. In the late 1990s a field of delicata squash that was grown for seed cross pollinated with gourds, resulting in fruit with a terrible bitter flavor. Pretty much every seed company in the country bought their seed from this source. This variety has been grown out from seed saved before the contamination and it is always delicious!

‘Flashy Butter Gem’ lettuce. I love this lettuce because it combines the color and flavor of my favorite lettuce variety, ‘Forellenschluss’, with the texture of my favorite types of lettuce, butterhead. It is is so pretty and tasty!

Kitazawa Seed

Misome. This is a spinach like green that grows well in cool weather. Very tasty and quick.

Tatsoi. Tatsoi is my favorite green for stir fries because each deep green leaf has a crunchy white petiole. Goes to seed quickly in the heat, but it is a great spring and fall crop.

‘Hojiso’ red and green shiso. The undersides of this green herb are colored bright violet. So pretty! Also very tasty in a cucumber salad.

‘Pak Choi’ green. Super pretty, easy to grow from seed and fast!

Seeds from Italy

‘Quarantina’ cima di rapa (broccoli rabe). This broccoli rabe matures in under 40 days, which means there is still time to get it in the ground for a fall crop.

‘Rossa di Treviso’ radicchio. Most radicchio that you find at the grocery store is round, but I prefer the elongated Treviso types. They have a slightly loose head, but the same bitter taste.

‘Super Marconi’ pole bean. The perfect green for grilling because the fat pods do not fall through the great. They have an almost meaty texture and a sweet, delicious flavor.

‘Cavolo Nero’ kale. A gorgeous black kale with deeply rumpled leaves. Grows well from seed and tastes delicious raw, stir fried, braised, and roasted.

‘Early Purple’ kohlrabi. I love to cut a kolrabi into matchsticks, drizzle olive oil and lemon juice over the top, plus a bit of coarse sea salt. It makes an excellent snack or a quick side dish.

(Image: ‘Flashy Butter Gem’ lettuce via Wild Garden Seed)

It must be said: hooray!! Finally some ripe tomatoes. Real ripe tomatoes. We have had a few cherry tomatoes here and there, but these ‘Jaune Flamme’ tomatoes are too big to just pop in your mouth. They need to be sliced. So that’s what we did. Sliced them right up, stuck them into a cheese sandwich and then walked down to the park and had a picnic dinner. We also ate skinny, skinny green beans harvested from our garden and watermelon for dessert. Definitely the best summer supper yet!

I am a huge fan of trellising cucumbers. Growing the vines up onto a support rather than allowing them to scramble along the ground reduces problems with disease, increases pollination by insects, and prevents the fruit from rotting when they come into contact with damp soil. Plus, the trellises make a cute focal point in the garden.

Fancy materials are not needed to make a functional and fairly attractive trellis. This one uses wood found in a free pile, metal fencing and a couple of bolts. For full instructions on how to make it, head over Re-Nest where I wrote all about it!

One of the best ways to make the most of a small garden space is to grow vegetables with multiple edible parts. This allows you to harvest the plant at different stages and enjoy roots, greens, flower buds, blossoms, and even seed pods, depending on the crop. One of my very favorite multi-use edibles is ‘Golden Ball’ turnip. I know that the words “favorite” and “turnip” are not typically used in conjunction, but hear me out. I think the reason why people don’t like turnips is because they are often harvested past their prime and then stored for weeks or longer. The roots retain their looks in storage, but they develop a much stronger flavor.

Small turnips, harvested at the size of a fat radish, are very sweet. You can seriously pull them out of the garden, rinse them off with the hose, and pop them right into your mouth. They are even better boiled and mashed with butter and caramelized onions. Even if you never warm up to the roots, the greens are phenomenal.

The greens have a very mild mustard flavor and a tender texture when harvested very small (just 2 to 3 inches long) and they can be added to salads at the stage. As the greens mature, they develop a stronger flavor and also a velcro-like texture (not unlike radish greens). At this point, the greens really aren’t very tasty raw, but they completely transform when cooked. The little prickles on the leaves disappear and heat tempers the mustard flavor. I like to stir-fry or braise the leaves with garlic and then stuff them into tacos or quesadillas. To harvest the greens, just cut off the outer layer of leaves as the plants grow (new leaves will emerge from the center). If you don’t want to harvest the roots, you can also grasp all the leaves from a single plant in one hand and cut them down two inches above the root for a cut-and-come again harvest.

‘Golden Ball’ has very pale yellow skin, exceptionally sweet roots, and productive tops. I planted mine in late spring and we are still harvesting the roots and greens. The plants are beginning to show signs of bolting, which is just fine with me. Turnips and broccoli rabe are very closely related botanically speaking, and turnip flower buds taste amazing in stir fry. Once I harvest the buds, I’ll pull up the remaining big roots and feed them to my chickens, who have never met a root vegetable they didn’t like.

Swiss chard is a biennial, which means that it grows roots and leaves in its first year. Following the winter, the plant stretches up towards the sky, its pretty stalks contort and seed heads form. Right now my Swiss chard is bolting (i.e going to seed). The only problem? I planted it this spring. Thankfully, I can blame my problem on the weather.

In general Swiss chard is remarkably bolt resistant in its first year. It produces a generous amount of leaves long after spinach and lettuce give up the ghost. But when Swiss chard is exposed to long periods of temperatures below 50 degrees, or wildly fluctuating temperatures, it gets confused and thinks that it lived through the winter. Transplanted seedlings are more prone to bolting than directly sown plants, and varieties with red or pink stalks are more vulnerable to premature bolting than ones with white stalks.

Swiss chard readily self sows, which means that when its seed drops to the ground it will germinate all on its own when the conditions are right (usually the following spring). And leaves from bolted chard do not develop a harsh or bitter taste like bolted spinach. So, unless you need to pull the bolting plants to make way for another crop, I encourage you to let the Swiss chard set its seed. You’ll get a new crop next year—or maybe even this fall if you are lucky—without any extra work on your part!

My favorite part of gardening is growing food that is hard—if not impossible—to find at grocery stores. Pea shoots fall firmly into this category (unless you are lucky enough to live by a great Asian market). The shoots, which are the tips of the pea vines, make the most fantastic salad green. They look like a pretty pile of scrollwork on the plate. And they taste divine, too. Kind of like peas, only lighter and sweeter.

In the garden I plant my peas about an inch apart. This super close spacing allows me to pinch out every plant when the shoots are 4 to 6 inches tall and have a delicious salad. I let the remaining shoots grow and pinch them back once when they are about 12 to 18 inches tall. After that I let the vines grow so they can produce pods.

In order to have an ample supply of both pea shoots and pea pods, I have taken a cue from my friend Lorene and started growing peas exclusively for their shoots in a crate on my patio. I pinch back the shoots about once every 7 to 10 days and the peas respond by sending up even more shoots. The shoots from snow, sugar snap, and English peas are all delicious. Just don’t be tempted to sample pea shoots from sweet pea flowers—they are not edible.

So where do you pinch? Grab a shoot by its tip and trace the stem down past the emerging growth and past the next lowest leaf. Stop at the second large leaf down. If you look closely where the stem emerges from the leaf you might see a little chartreuse nub (see the arrow above). That is where you want to pinch.

By removing the growth above that little nub, you signal it to grow into a new shoot. Don’t see a nub? Just pinch as close as you can above the leaf. If the shoot feels a little tough, move up and pinch above the next highest leaf. Shoots that are 2 or 3 inches long are the most tender; 4 to 6 inch ones are also tasty but are best cooked briefly in a stir fry.

I took this picture just a couple of days after pinching the shoots back. As you can see the little nubs are starting to grow!

I’ve found that I can harvest the shoots growing in containers for 2 or even 3 months (depending on the heat). This means I’ve had a continual supply of shoots since early April and they are still going strong. The peas in my garden (‘Arrow’ and ‘Super Sugar Snap’) will be finished producing pods in the next week or so. Before I pull the vines out, I will pinch back the tips for one last harvest of pea shoots.

I also planted some seeds in a little terracotta pot that was hanging around in our garage. I’m using it as centerpiece on our patio table. When we are sitting outside in the evening we often just pinch the shoots back from the centerpiece and snack on them. It’s such a luxury!