Garden Wisdom Blog

Simple Corn Soup: Three little words that really mean what they say in this recipe. This is the perfect summer soup to serve warm and start a harvest meal. It provides all the joy of buttery rich sweet corn on the cob, except there’s no cob, no buttery fingers, and no mess! This soup transforms the corn-on-the-cob experience into a rather more elegant affair. It forms the platform for any number of toppings or applications. Adjust the water content to adjust the thickness. Make it thicker to enjoy as a purée on which to place steamed baby carrots and scallopini...

Ah, the zucchini – the crop that keeps on giving and giving! By the fifth week of harvesting bundles of the tender fruits, you’ve had it in pasta. You’ve had them grilled. You’ve made zucchini bread. You’ve even tried the Masala Zucchini recipe! As tempers wear thin, and you begin to question the wisdom of planting five zucchini plants, it must be time to attempt Chocolate Zucchini Cake! While no specific health claims can be made about this indulgent dessert, it does produce one of the richest, chocolatiest, and most moist of all cakes imaginable. It is an easy recipe...

Garlic is an incredibly economical crop. Planted in the fall, it grows very slowly over winter, and is ready to harvest in late spring to early summer the following year. If it is dried and cured properly, it will stay ready to use for months — even into the following spring. So from a relatively small space, a lot can be harvested, and enjoyed over a very long period. The secret lies in how to cure garlic correctly for long term storage. Be as gentle as possible when first digging up your garlic crop. Bruises and cuts to the bulb...

Farm Box Pickup Week Two After learning how the system works, it becomes immediately a routine part of our week. Every Tuesday we look forward to finding out what’s in this week’s CSA farm box program. Lydia at Cropthorne Farm does up a chalk board each week, and it’s kind of smart marketing. Already we have “box envy” for her customers who opted for the Medium size. They get a few more items each week, and the diversity is compelling. In week two we got carrots, cucumbers, spinach, radishes and the first of (no doubt) many zucchinis. Although the radishes...

This Gazpacho Verde recipe makes the perfect introduction to an outdoor meal on a hot summer evening. Served chilled, it is both cooling and refreshing, with a refined flavour that is out of this world. This cold (vegan) soup can form the base for countless variations of garnishes and complementary items. It’s a very simple recipe, with only a handful of ingredients — but it must be prepared in advance so it has at least one to two hours to chill. Ingredients: 3 cups English cucumber, sliced thinly 1 cup fresh Sweet Basil leaves 2 Tbsp fresh Oregano leaves, removed...