Category: Local Food (Page 1 of 13)

Organic mulch is the unsung hero of my veggie garden.

Mulch performs garden magic by just lying there looking gorgeous in my garden.

Like a good milk mustache, I see mulch in people’s gardens as an endearing and wholesome quality.

It is one of my secret tools in the garden—I can control so many variables, soil moisture, soil temperature, and organic content, with an annual addition.

One of the basics of soil health is to ‘keep the soil covered’ and mulch does this and so much more. Specifically, I’m talking about organic mulch, like straw, tree leaves or compost added to the top of the soil (not worked into the soil).

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‘Lettuce’ Introduce You… Everything you need to know about growing lettuce and the best salads in town!

We’ll get you harvesting more flavor and crunch from your lettuce patch.

New gardeners are often told to grow salad greens as an easy vegetable crop. This advice is likely linked to the shorter harvest time for most salad greens. But beyond that, lettuce can be tricky for us northern gardeners- especially as climate chaos keeps creeping in.

Lucky for us, we’ve got a salad-centric farmer as our guide. Meet Jesse Edgington of Edgie’s Veggies. He’s an organic urban farmer and salad slinger. He grows in zone 4 around the Twin Cities (you may have seen him at St. Paul’s weekly Farmers Markets) so he’s a pro at pushing the early and late ‘shoulder seasons’ and dealing with those high heat and humidity days that plague many a salad lover.

Here’s what I gleaned from spending a day on his urban farm to help you grow great lettuce.

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I truly can’t believe I’ve been sharing garden, homestead, farmer, and food stories with you all for eight years now.

Thanks for being part of the movement to heal our earth one garden, homestead, and meal at a time.

In those 8 years lots has changed and much has stayed the same. Locavore is a known word. Farmers markets have exploded. We’re inching towards Victory Garden era numbers of people gardening (but not quantity yet). Climate news has gotten scarier, but many people are doing more.

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With early planting and adding a few varieties, we can get you growing spinach all season long!

A few tweaks and tricks can strengthen our spinach growing skills and save us from buying those—very expensive and oh so wasteful—plastic bags of half-wilted greens shipped across the country.

Not to mention the multiple recalls for listeria and E.coli outbreaks…

And, as we know that produce loses around 30% of its nutritional value within days of harvesting, growing our own makes sense both to our personal health and the health of the planet.

Plus, crunching sweet spinach leaves is one of the joys of an early season garden.

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I started growing leeks about 8 years ago and now can’t imagine the end of a harvest season without them!

Plus—leek powder is a must in my spice rack now (more on that later)!

Leeks are like the cosmopolitan older cousin to onions—graceful lines compared to round and squat stature. They have a more sophisticated flavor; and yet somehow easier to grow for me!

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with Michelle of Forks in the Dirt

This is the spring to dig deeper into your gardening and homesteading skills!

I am so excited to have public, in person classes available and now open for registration!

Feb 12th – 6:30-8pm– Herbal Salve Making
*SOLD OUT* Anchor Coffee House

Feb 27th – 6-8pm Intro to Small-Scale Homesteading
(with Stephanie Thurow + Starter Kits provided)
Richfield Community Center

March 2nd – 9:30am-3pm Practical Permaculture to Get You Started
*SOLD OUT*(with Elaina Moss)
Women’s Environmental Institute

April 14th – 6:30-8pm – Intro to Small-Scale Homesteading
(with Stephanie Thurow)
WBL Public Library – FREE!

April 16th – 6:30-8pm – Seed Starting + ‘Winter’ Sowing
Anchor Coffee House

If you want to make a recipe that will turn ‘kale no’ into ‘KALE YEAH’ – here it is.

This is the perfect balance of healthy kale hiding in creamy cheesy perfection, finished with a crispy topping. This has become a holiday family meal favorite- and that’s saying somethings with all those kale haters out there 😉

Bacon fat is an amazing addition but not necessary for this recipe.  And as with all my recipes there’s room for making them different each time, or just to make them your own. Sometimes I’ll add in the bacon, or if my family ate all the bacon, I’ll just use the bacon fat to sauté the leeks and onions… a bit of pancetta or even smoked ham would be delicious too. If you like it spicy, add in the hot pepper flakes or even some dashes of hot sauce. If you don’t use bacon fat, taste test and add salt as needed.

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Find your new favorite by comparing twelve tomato varieties with me.

Did you know that tomatoes have been bred for different purposes for centuries?

Some are perfect for popping in your mouth, like cherry tomatoes. Some are meant to balance out that bacon on a BLT, like the huge heirloom slicers. And some are best for making sauce, like the thick and meaty paste tomatoes. And then there’s a million variations in between!

With over 10,000 known tomato varieties this is of course a very limited list, but also based on my nearly 20 years of growing tomatoes in the north.

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Nothing says fresh summer flavors more than Green Goddess dressing!

Grabbing handfuls of all the herbs and creating a magically delicious while nutrient dense topping for things from salads, to chips and sweet potato fries couldn’t be easier. It is literally dump, blend, and pour (or dip).

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