Gardening

In my (much) younger years, I lived in a rural japanese farming town surrounded by rice fields and ubiquitous backyard gardens. During that time, and in travels across the country, I grew to deeply appreciate Japanese cuisine’s treatment of vegetables. A sentiment I think a lot of people can agree with considering the food’s international popularity. In our new urban homestead, we are doing our best to begin incorporating some favorites from that time into our garden....

For the first 27 years of my life, I hated the taste of tomatoes. More than hated, I actively couldn’t understand why anyone would eat these pungent, round monstrosities. I admit it and accept the shame of my poor palette. Of course, that all changed when a friend introduced me to his homegrown, organic cherry tomatoes with high sugar content - I was hooked from then on. In fact, I started gardening more seriously soon after and cherry tomatoes planted in fabric grow bags were my first seriously successful crop....

Malabar spinach is a criminally underutilized garden vegetable. Consider some of the attributes used to describe this vining spinach alternative and I think you’ll understand what I mean: heat-tolerant, highly productive, provides continuous harvests, vigorous vines, beautiful, hardy, and readily self-starting. And of course, delicious. A delicious, vining leafy green. In many ways, it’s a perfect fit for our goals at Nextdoor Homestead: lowering the food bill in a meaningful way on small plots....

Fall is just around the corner, bringing with it Halloween and Thanksgiving (for our readers in the U.S.) and all things pumpkin. If you’ve got fond childhood memories of hitting the local pumpkin patch, let’s bring that feeling home! Don’t worry if you don’t have a big garden patch or giant raised bed to plant in. While pumpkins are a large vining plant with notoriously deep root systems, they can absolutely be grown successfully and produce large fruits in simple grow bags....

Chances are good that your yard features an empty, neglected spot under partial shade cover. Time to remedy that! Check out the list below for a selection of vegetables we recommend to fill those shady areas with edible plants, increase your harvest, and lower those grocery bills. What is partial shade? Unfortunately, growing vegetables successfully in partial shade isn’t as easy as moving a planter box under an awning where the sun’s rays never reach....