Debbie joins Green Acres Garden Podcast to share how to use fall harvest
Debbie Arrington of Sacramento Digs Gardening and Kevin Jordan of the Green Acres Garden Podcast recently chatted about cooking what you grow. Courtesy Green Acres Nursery & Supply
When I joined Kevin Jordan and Austin Blank for the Green Acres Garden Podcast, we talked at length about a common topic for food gardeners: Making use of your harvest. In other words, you grew it; now eat it.
Every backyard farmer knows that lament, heard most often during zucchini season or weeks after an enthusiastic planting spree. To me, it also echoes in my head when it’s time to harvest something I tried growing for the first time, such as some very pretty melons or unusual Asian greens.
What we grow very directly inspires what we cook. Our readers see that every Sunday in the selection of recipes that Kathy Morrison and I create for Sacramento Digs Gardening. Our three seasonal e-cookbooks are packed with dozens of examples of cooking what’s in season – and in abundance.
Before you plant, it helps to have some suggestions of what to do with the product of your gardening efforts. Our most recent e-cookbook, Taste Fall!, has more than 60 seasonal recipes using what we’re harvesting now – more than 30 different fruits and vegetables.
But our Taste Spring! e-cookbook has just as many ideas for how to use the vegetables you’re likely growing or planting right now.
What to do with your harvest – now and for harvests to come – is the basis of a project Sacramento Digs Gardening is now working on with our friends at Green Acres Nursery & Supply. We plan to provide easy links to our recipes at point of plant or seed purchase. (More on that to come.)
Episode No. 99 in the Green Acres podcast series, “Fall Recipes from the Garden,” focuses on using our bountiful fall harvest. For me, that’s a bumper crop of Fuyu persimmons and apples.
Also an avid food gardener, Kevin teaches gardening and a lot more at Leo A. Palmiter Jr./Sr. High School; he’s nursery and landscape instructor for the school’s Sustainable Environments Learning Academy. He was honored by the Sacramento Office of Education as the 2023 Teacher of the Year.
For this podcast, we had a great (and much longer) conversation about gardening and recipe ideas. Austin worked his editing magic to get it to fit into 28 minutes.
Listen to it here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1610311/14021958-fall-recipes-from-the-garden
Find our TasteFall! E-cookbook here (it’s free!): https://sacdigsgardening.californialocal.com/article/60135-taste-fall-recipes-from-your-garden/
New podcast are posted every Friday. For past podcasts: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1610311.
More on Green Acres and what’s ready to plant now: https://idiggreenacres.com/.
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Garden Checklist for week of April 21
This week there’s plenty to keep gardeners busy. With no rain in the immediate forecast, remember to irrigate any new transplants.
* Weed, weed, weed! Get them before they flower and go to seed.
* April is the last chance to plant citrus trees such as dwarf orange, lemon and kumquat. These trees also look good in landscaping and provide fresh fruit in winter.
* Smell orange blossoms? Feed citrus trees with a low dose of balanced fertilizer (such as 10-10-10) during bloom to help set fruit. Keep an eye out for ants.
* Apply slow-release fertilizer to the lawn.
* Thoroughly clean debris from the bottom of outdoor ponds or fountains.
* Spring brings a flush of rapid growth, and that means your garden is really hungry. Feed shrubs and trees with a slow-release fertilizer. Or mulch with a 1-inch layer of compost.
* Azaleas and camellias looking a little yellow? If leaves are turning yellow between the veins, give them a boost with chelated iron.
* Trim dead flowers but not leaves from spring-flowering bulbs such as daffodils and tulips. Those leaves gather energy to create next year's flowers. Also, give the bulbs a fertilizer boost after bloom.
* Pinch chrysanthemums back to 12 inches for fall flowers. Cut old stems to the ground.
* Mulch around plants to conserve moisture and control weeds.
* From seed, plant beans, beets, cantaloupes, carrots, corn, cucumbers, melons, radishes and squash.
* Plant onion sets.
* In the flower garden, plant seeds for asters, cosmos, celosia, marigolds, salvia, sunflowers and zinnias.
* Transplant petunias, zinnias, geraniums and other summer bloomers.
* Plant perennials and dahlia tubers for summer bloom.
* Mid to late April is about the last chance to plant summer bulbs, such as gladiolus and tuberous begonias.
* Transplant lettuce seedlings. Choose varieties that mature quickly such as loose leaf.
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