This winter, as you pore over the seed catalogs and dream of next season’s garden, think about including seed saving in the harvest. Starting a seed-saving garden can be easy and cost-effective. For one, when you save your own, you won’t have to depend on seed companies for the next year’s plants. You also have a hand in shaping your garden. By selecting seeds from plants with the best flavor, size or other desired characteristics, you can create a garden most suited your tastes and microclimate.
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Topping my list of favorite fall foods are sweet, saucer-shaped cipollini onions. I stock up on cipollinis at the farmers market in autumn, so I’ll have plenty to last for a couple of months. (You can also find them in grocery stores throughout a good part of the winter.)
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RECIPE
Small, sweet, saucer-shaped cipollini onions are delicious when oven roasted and slowly caramelized in olive oil. Serve these savory onions as an appetizer, with crackers, or as a side dish for meat or chicken.
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Pastry chef/farmer Tina Hoban on her farm in Ferndale, WA.
When pastry chef Tina Hoban of
Scratch Desserts, needs fresh eggs for baking, she can step outside her commercial kitchen to the hen house and gather some. And when she wants fresh fruit for pear or apple tarts, she only has to walk past the vegetable garden to her orchard.
That’s because Scratch Desserts, the artisan bakery Tina founded in November 2010, is located as close to fresh foods as she can get it: on her farm.
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Coriander seeds
Contemporary research shows a potentially important medicinal role for the culinary herb, coriander (or cilantro, as the leaves are sometimes known). Scientists in Portugal, testing oil from coriander seeds, found the herb effective against such dangerous bacteria as
E.coli and staphylococcus.
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A mother deer and fawns check out a suburban backyard.
Watching deer in the wild can be beautiful, but once these hooved herbivores decide to make a meal of your garden, it’s time to plan your defenses.
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A deer bypasses a tomato plant to look for more palatable fare.
If you want to minimize deer damage in an open garden, its best to start with plants that deer don’t like. Deer will “browse” on most anything when wild food sources are low. Some garden edibles, however, are less attractive to these voracious munchers than others.
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RECIPE
Cookbook author Mary Ellen Carter created this tangy coleslaw recipe, featuring raw kohlrabi. Kohlrabi’s crunchy texture and mild cabbage flavor make it an excellent choice for slaws.
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Chef Andy Millage of Let Them Eat Cake created this celebration cake in the shape of a champagne bottle.
Pastry Chef Andra (Andy) Millage wants you to eat her artwork. From her artisan bakery at
Let Them Eat Cake in Bellingham, Washington, she creates one-of-a-kind cake sculptures of everything from animals to mountains, toys, sandwiches, swimmers, trains and more — whatever is unique and personalized to her customers.
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oregano
Can a simple herb help save the atmosphere and increase farming revenue in the process? The aromatic herb oregano
(Origanum vulgare), a staple in most modern kitchens, often meets our taste buds mixed with tomato paste as a topping in pizza. This versatile plant’s virtues, however, extend beyond the kitchen into human and animal medicine. In 400 B.C., the Greek physician Hippocrates used oregano as an antiseptic and an aid to digestion.
Flash forward to 2011, where oregano has emerged as a promising digestive aid for cattle. If you think this is not a major issue, consider the numbers.
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