Garden Wisdom Blog — category: Vegetable Talk

Every fall people ask us how to harvest quinoa. These tall plants produce masses of seeds, each seed resulting from the pollination of a single flower in their beautiful inflorescences (flower clusters). When the seeds are fully ripe and ready for harvest, they will fall out of the seed head easily. If part of the seed head is grasped in hand, the hard little seeds should easily dislodge. There will be seasons when cold, wet weather, threatens the harvest. If such weather is looming, simply cut the seed stalks about 15cm (6″) below the start of the seed head, and...

Learn about onions (Allium cepa) & shallots (A. cepa aggreatum) Onions represent perhaps the most ancient of cultivated vegetables, dating back to the Bronze Age, as early as 5000 BC. Or, at least the archaeological evidence suggests that onions were eaten as food at that time. Cultivation may not have occurred until 3000 BC, in ancient Egypt. There, they were worshipped as symbols of eternal life — perhaps because of the round shape and concentric rings of the vegetable. Ailsa Craig sweet onions The onion, with its pungent odour and strong flavour, was also used as medicine since around the...

Collards (Brassica oleracea Acephala group) Kale (Brassica oleracea Acephala group) Russian or Napa Kale (Brassica rapus ssp. pabularia syn. B. napus) Learn about kale and collards here. As the name suggests, Brassicas in the Acephala group do not form central heads, as cabbages do, or they form central heads that are relatively loose and open. Sometimes called Spring Greens, collards and kale are extremely similar, genetically speaking. Both form upright, open plants with large leaves that are often veined with distinctive colours. Collards typically have smoother, broader, more rounded leaves compared to those of kale, which can be extremely curled....

About Melons: Watermelon (Citrullus lanatus) & Muskmelon (Cucumis melo) One of the basic facts about melons is that they can be challenging to grow well here in south coastal BC. But with a bit of added heat they can be very productive. Melons picked fresh from the vine are unbelievably sweet and, like so many other kinds of garden produce, are nothing at all like the ones you might find in a grocery store. The flavour and sugar content of fresh melons are positively mind-blowing, and make the effort to grow them very worth while. Both watermelon and muskmelon (a...

Beets, like many root vegetables are biennials, which, if not harvested, will bloom in the second year of growth. One of the interesting facts about beets is they are closely related to Swiss chard, which can easily be seen by the similarity in their leaf structure and the intense colour of the petioles, or stems. In botany, garden beets are differentiated from sugar beets and mangelwurzel beets through a complicated series of subspecies and variety names. Sugar beets have a very high concentration of sucrose, and are grown for processing into table sugar. Mangelwurzel beets are typically grown as animal...