Garden Wisdom Blog — harvest

West Coast Seeds is a proud supporter of the amazing organization, Growing Chefs. These “Chefs for Children’s Urban Agriculture” bring food into the urban classroom in the form of raw ingredients that are completely unfamiliar to the students. Their mission is to educate children, families, and community members about healthy eating and healthy food systems. Over the course of three and a half months, the chefs visit the classroom every two weeks, helping the students plant and tend to indoor vegetable gardens. The chefs engage the students in games, lessons, and activities focusing on plant growth, local and urban agriculture,...

Asparagus (Asparagus officinalis) Asparagus has very few close botanical relatives in its own family, Asparagaceae. The name “asparagus” simply comes from the Latin botanical title, with its roots in Greek and the original Persian, asparag, meaning “shoots.” The asparagus we eat, of course, are actually the young shoots of a large perennial plant, harvested shortly after appearing above ground in the spring. The shoots issue forth from an underground stem (crown), and if left to mature, form a dense cloud of diaphanous green foliage. The fern-like leaves are actually modified stems called cladodes, which emerge from the crutches of true...

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...