If you were reading along last season, these posts may look familiar. Either way, this is a good place to dig in and get ready for a new year of gardening adventures.

There are both triumphs and deeply humbling life lessons here, and I’m so happy to share them all with you. I hope you’ll find some genuine comfort and inspiration for your garden this year!

Here’s the most recent garden post:
👉 🌱Summer Garden Harvest: Vegetables, Herbs, and Flowers

And here are links to the other newly-published garden posts, from the earliest to the most recent:

• How I Planted 28 Heirloom Potato Varieties
• How I Grow Nearly 300 Culinary Herbs in My Garden
• Early Summer Crops in My Garden: An Herb and Vegetable Tour
• 12 Life Lessons from the Garden
• My Gardening Mistakes Plus Herbs Veggies and Flowers
• Herbs, Vegetables, and Flowers in the Summer Garden
• 21 Types of Heirloom Garlic and Rare Garden Crops

I still have a few more posts to add from last year’s gardening journey, and I’ll share those as I publish them. And of course, I’ll include my upcoming recipe and gardening posts as well.

And below you can subscribe for free to get my global heirloom gardening and plant-based recipe posts delivered straight to your mailbox. I’m really glad you’re here in the garden with me. I’m looking forward to another rewarding year of harvests together.🥕

And sharing this post is most welcome. I’m so glad you’re here!

Shell

Vin d'orange is a gorgeous and refreshing wine apéritif from Provence, and it's easy and fulfilling to make yourself. It's ready in just 4 weeks of steeping. You can serve this this drink as a cool refresher in summer, a comforting citrus spiced apéritif in winter, or any time in between.

This captivating rosé sipper made our testers swoon with enticing notes of orange and lemon zest, cinnamon sticks, and vanilla beans. And see which combinations of fortification (brandy vs vodka) and fresh garden herbs (from none, to common, to less-common, to rare) won the ultimate taste test with 30 testers! 🍊🌿

👉 Explore the full guide and winning recipe at Shovel and Crunch

🌻And below you can subscribe for free to get my global heirloom gardening and vegan recipe posts delivered straight to your mailbox. Thanks so much for joining me on this exciting cooking and gardening adventure. And sharing this post is most welcome. I’m so glad you’re here!

🌱Shell

👉 Get the full recipe at Shovel and Crunch

🌻And below you can subscribe for free to get my heirloom vegan gardening and recipe posts and newsletters delivered straight to your mailbox. Thanks so much for joining me on this exciting cooking and gardening adventure. And sharing this post is most welcome. I’m so glad you’re here!

🌱Shell

👉 Get the full recipe at Shovel and Crunch

🌻And below you can subscribe for free to get my recipe and garden posts and newsletters delivered straight to your mailbox. Thanks so much for joining me on this exciting cooking and gardening adventure. And sharing this post is most welcome. I’m so glad you’re here!

🌱Shell

👉Get the full recipe at Shovel and Crunch

🌻And below you can subscribe for free to get my recipe and garden posts and newsletters delivered straight to your mailbox. Thanks so much for joining me on this exciting cooking and gardening adventure! And sharing this post is most welcome. I’m so glad you’re here!

🌱Shell

Potatoes are one of my absolute favorite crops to grow. They’re easy to plant, they don’t require much maintenance during the growing season, and they’re truly like a treasure hunt to harvest. You never know what size of tubers you’ll have, and how many you’ll get. After a lifetime of gardening, it’s still magical and exciting for me to grow and dig them up. I hope you’ll grow some of these distinctive heirloom potatoes for yourself and your family!

👉Get the full post at Shovel and Crunch

🌻And below you can subscribe for free to get my recipe and garden posts and newsletters delivered straight to your mailbox. Thanks so much for joining me on this exciting cooking and gardening adventure! And sharing this post is most welcome. I’m so glad you’re here!

🌱Shell

It's so easy to grow and savor impossibly fresh mint in your kitchen from your own backyard. And I have 54 types for you to savor! I've grown them all and documented each one with photos, details and my own scent notes, so you'll know which ones are just right for you. I hope you enjoy these mints as much as I do!

👉Get the full post at Shovel and Crunch

🌻And below you can subscribe for free to get my recipe and garden posts and newsletters delivered straight to your mailbox. Thanks so much for joining me on this exciting cooking and gardening adventure! And sharing this post is most welcome. I’m so glad you’re here!

🌱Shell

👉Get the full recipe at Shovel and Crunch

🌻And below you can subscribe for free to get my recipe and garden posts and newsletters delivered straight to your mailbox. Thanks so much for joining me on this exciting cooking and gardening adventure! And sharing this post is most welcome. I’m so glad you’re here!

🌱Shell

📒 A Multi-Faceted Wealth of Information

Whether you’re new to veganism, curious about Veganuary, or already a seasoned plant-based publisher, I’ve created this free guide to include as many vegan Substack resources as possible. Please feel free to restack this post to help it reach more readers and spread the word.

I’ve added some photos of veggies from my garden to this post just for fun.

The guide currently has over 200 Substack publications, with categories such as:

• Cooking

• Nutrition / Wellness

• Lifestyle

• Ethics

• Animal Rights / Advocacy

• Animal Sanctuaries

• Travel

• Fitness

• And More

The resource list includes the name of each account, a description of each publication in the author’s own words, the author’s name, and up to 3 categories for each entry. I’ve prioritized adding them in the order of prevalence for each one.

🫂 A Wonderful Community

I’m so excited to share this guide with you. The vegan publishing community on Substack is still a small but growing collaborative group of writers in the plant-based movement. And I hope we’ll add more as new readers become interested in plant-based eating, growing, and living!

If there are accounts I’ve missed, or that could use editing, please let me know. I love our plant-based community, and I’m also looking forward to the day when our momentum grows enough to make this spreadsheet too large to manage. That’ll be a great problem to have!

❤️ A Labor of Love

I’ve been working diligently on this guide for weeks, and this project has been a meaningful way to help me get through my recent surgical recovery.

I’m so grateful to the vegan community, which I’ve been part of since 2012. My own Substack account, Shell at Shovel and Crunch, includes my newsletters about global heirloom veganic gardening and cooking, and my companion blog with my free recipes and garden posts is Shovel and Crunch. I’ve met so many wonderful plant-based publishers whose work I’m happy to share among all of us.

💡Helpful tips about the guide:

• I’ll keep this up to date as well as I can. Please send me updates, new entries, and feedback any time! I love the idea of keeping this a living guide for all of us to use as our community grows.

• Don’t worry if you don’t have Google Sheets. You should be able to access the spreadsheet from your phone, desktop, or laptop without it.

• Please read the foreign language accounts too! Most modern browsers should allow you to instantly translate these pages into English or another language of choice.

Without further ado, here’s a link to the free vegan resources guide. Please feel free to add comments directly to this post, and restack if you find this of value so more of us can discover these wonderful plant-based publications.

👉 Take me to the Vegan Resources Guide on Substack!

You’re also welcome to contact me through my Substack page below with updates, additions, or feedback. Thanks so much for being there.

👉 Get the full recipe at Shovel and Crunch

🌻And below you can subscribe for free to get my recipe and garden posts and newsletters delivered straight to your mailbox. Thanks so much for joining me on this exciting cooking and gardening adventure! And sharing this post is most welcome. I’m so glad you’re here!

🌱Shell

I’m really excited to share this harvest with you. I picked everything on Thanksgiving day (November 27th), just before driving from Michigan to New York to have my pelvis surgically rebuilt for the 3rd time. It was my 9th surgery related to carrying my 5 kids. It’s a good thing they’re cute!!!

So I had to scramble, since my recovery restrictions wouldn’t have allowed me to do this harvest after I returned. And I wasn’t sure if everything would be ready to be picked.

Not only was everything ready, but after I washed and stored it all in tubs and then left for 9 days for my procedure, everything is still looking good afterward and viable to use! I’m so grateful. It’s really rewarding that even in a cold climate like mine here in zone 6A in southeastern Michigan, I can do succession planting and get at least 2 full harvests in the same bed from the spring through the fall.

Here’s what I’ve picked. And at the end, after the main crops, I’ll show you the shockingly delicious tubers I picked from my African potato mint!!!

Celery

I planted 2 types of celery this year: Chinese pink and Amsterdam cutting celery. The cutting celery is meant to be picked when young and tender. And while my Chinese pink didn’t have time to really bulk up its stems, it was succulent and so flavorful. I’ve definitely found homegrown celery to be worth it. The flavor is more pronounced, savory, and just all-around so much more enjoyable than the grocery store varieties.

Endive

Oh how I love these sturdy greens! These will hold up so well to fall salads, and I’m excited to try them with a traditional French mustard vinaigrette and also my own recipe for black garlic vinaigrette.

Turnips

I still need to find more ways to prepare these turnips. I’ve only tried them roasted so far. Do you guys have any favorite plant-based recipes you’d like to share? I need to cook with turnips more often. I love these gorgeous and easy-to-grow veggies!

Carrots

The deer took most of my carrots this year, as I’d thought my fence in this bed was tall enough (given how shallow the jumping depth was). But it wasn’t. Sigh. At least I’ve managed to pick a few! These beautifully-colored heirloom varieties have the most wonderful flavor. And the aromatic fragrance of the freshly-dug roots is right up there with my favorite garden veggie scents - pea shoots and tomato leaves.

Dandelion

This isn’t the type that pops up in your yard as a weed. This is an Italian heirloom with a nice peppery edge. You can eat it raw, or cook it for a more mellow flavor.

Mizuna

I didn’t even plant mizuna this fall. It must have reseeded. And I’m so glad it did, as it’s such a wonderful green with a mild to medium bite. Mizuna is an important heirloom crop in Japan, where it’s often used in hot pots, blanched, stir-fried, and used in soups.

Mache

This is one of my hands-down favorite salad greens, also known as mâche, corn salad, lamb’s lettuce, or field salad. It has a nutty and mild flavor, and such a delightfully smooth texture.

When we lived in Germany, the little grocery store on our street had Feldsalat, and we were so happy to eat it. We ate it dressed simply in nut oil (walnut, pecan, or hazelnut) and coarse salt. Pure heaven.

Daikon Radish

This monster below shocked me. I had no idea it had gotten so large! And it sadly snapped off below the part shown in the photo. It was just too hard to dig down far enough to get the whole thing.

The daikons in the basket below are the same Japanese minowase variety as the giant one in the photo above. I’m not sure how one of them was able to outgrow the rest of them by so much!

This variety is milder than many others, with a clean, juicy, and lightly peppery flavor. And daikons really help to aerate the soil with their long roots, often referred to as tillage radishes. These are a really special crop.

Celery root (celeriac)

These gorgeous gnarled roots can be hard to find in grocery stores nearby. I’m so glad to have this harvest of them, since my recipe for a French céleri rémoulade (celery root salad) is almost ready. I’ll share it in a blog post when it’s done. I can’t wait to do another trial with these homegrown ones!

Choy sum

I haven’t tried these yet, and I’m looking for the best dish to make them with. Maybe just simply braised, so I can really discern the flavor. I’m excited to try them, including the leaves, stems, and the even milder and sweeter flowers as well.

Rutabaga

Remember Phil the Rutabaga? Here’s Phillis! I think she’s gorgeous, lumps and all.

Chinese cabbage

This was the first crop out of this batch that I’ve already cooked with since returning home from my surgery. (And it wasn’t easy with my restrictions, as I had to ask for help to lift everything in the process.)

I made a really comforting congee (Chinese rice porridge) with this head of golden beauty cabbage below, short grain rice, shiitake mushrooms, crispy air-fried tofu, garlic, ginger, soy sauce, and sesame oil. We finished it off with fried shallots and chili crisp, and were all moaning in delight. It was SO good.

Kale

Kale is such an amazing salad green. Even if you dress your salad in advance, the leaves stay crunchy for days in the fridge! I don’t even bother massaging them. I love keeping them as crisp as possible. This is such a special green to grow and eat. And look at all of the gorgeous variations you can find! I just treasure this crop.

Mustard

I need to find a really special way to try these mustard greens to really show off their flavor. I’d love to try them blanched and simply dressed, pickled, or stir-fried as they’re commonly prepared in Japan. There are so many wonderful options.

Cardoon

This was my first time growing this stunning Mediterranean thistle. It’s the same species as the globe artichoke, Cynara cardunculus, with the varieties (like my gobbo di Nizzia below) selected for hearty stems rather than flower buds.

I didn’t take the time to blanch these stems as they were growing this year, by tying them together and hilling up with straw. Doing this intentional light reduction both suppresses bitterness and tenderizes the stems before the harvest.

I definitely want to grow them again, and next time I’ll try blanching them as they grow. But I’m so excited to try these stems from this fall’s harvest either way!

Radicchio

Radicchio is a flavorful green with a delightful bitter counterpoint to add to your salad. It’s also wonderful grilled, braised, roasted, or sautéed. It can be a little finicky to germinate directly outside if it’s too warm. I’ve planted them in the past and thought they’d totally failed, only to discover them growing months later when it’s become suitably cold enough for them to sprout.

And I was shocked to discover on both my palla rosa radicchio (and even more surprising with my italiko rosso dandelion above), that when I didn’t pick them in time earlier in the summer, they had sprouted blue chicory flowers! Just like the ones I’ve adored seeing on the roadside since I was a kid.

I’ve looked many times at ordering chicory plants to try roasting the roots to add to coffee. I just haven’t done it yet. I’m reading now that while I could technically do this with the roots of my radicchio and dandelion varieties, they aren’t bred for this, and the roots would likely be small and have a low yield.

But now I’m really excited anew to try this root idea. It would be more favorable to find a type of chicory that’s been optimized for chicory coffee. This would be a really exciting project.

Bok choy

My daughter Mio and I especially love bok choy. It’s so good in a bowl of noodles and broth. We often had this at our beloved neighborhood noodle place in Shanghai that we miss so much. The crisp, mild stems and the smooth, nutty greens really make the difference in so many dishes. I’m really happy about this harvest.

Swiss chard

I have an upcoming recipe post that I’m really excited to share with you from Corsica using Swiss chard. This green is so earthy and savory, and the stems are so vibrantly-colored. I just love it.

Lettuce

Sigh, homegrown lettuce is just the best. There’s nothing like it at the store. It’s so, so worth growing for yourself to experience this. And you can fit in multiple rounds of it, at least in the spring and fall if you have warm summers. And it’s so easy to grow.

Tatsoi

I remember seeing this at our little neighborhood grocery stores in Shanghai, and I never knew what to do with it. Now I’m so happy to grow it for myself so I can experiment with it to my heart’s content. You can see that the varmints ate some of the edges of the leaves, so I’m just glad that they’ve left enough for me to use.

Chijimisai

Look how gorgeous this green is! I can’t wait to cook with it. I’d like to try blanching it, adding it to soups, and adding it to stir-fries. This photo just makes my heart sing, especially since the ground is now covered with a thick layer of snow. I’m so relieved that I picked all of these crops in time before winter really hit!

African potato mint - with delicious tubers!!!

I’ve been growing mint for decades, and this one was totally new to me. And so different! I’ll be including it in a post soon about all 54 types of mint I grew this year. And of all of them, this one is the most unique. It has edible tubers!

I was shocked to discover this. But before we get there below, here are my scent and flavor notes of the leaves while they were growing this summer:

Scent notes:

Smells like a regular crushed green leaf, not like mint whatsoever; green pepper, grass, cucumber, green bean; fresh, herbaceous and pleasant, but not minty at all.

Flavor notes:

Really thick and crunchy; like with the scent, not minty at all; not pleasant at all either; tough, fibrous, bitter and otherwise nondescript.

Ok, so this isn’t a mint that’s meant to be enjoyed from the leaves. Let’s look into this. African potato mint is Plectranthus esculentus, in the mint family Lamiaceae. It’s not a true mint in the genus Mentha. And unlike most mints, it’s only a perennial in USDA hardiness zones 9-11. So most of us need to grow it as an annual.

This distinctive variety isn’t grown for its leaves, as my scent and flavor notes can attest. This mint is even more unique. It’s grown for its absolutely delicious tubers. It’s indigenous to southern and eastern Africa, and is traditionally grown by smallholder farmers as part of mixed cropping systems.

Today this crop is rare and declining. So please consider growing it, since the tubers are fricking phenomenal. We had a small harvest, as you can see below. I grew my African potato mint in a pot that was about 16 x 16 inches (41 cm) square, and this yielded a crop of just 7 small tubers. But what wonderful tubers they were! Here they are raw after harvesting and scrubbing them:

And here they are roasted with just a light spray of olive oil and coarse salt. We all tried them, and found them to taste really similar to potatoes, but lighter, crunchier, and slightly nutty. They were absolutely sublime.

I’d like to try growing them again, in the ground rather than in a pot. I think my short growing season may also have been an issue with the ripening size, especially since this mint is an annual in my cold climate. So maybe I could start some cuttings earlier (which is how this mint is typically propagated), or protect them from the cold longer. It would be great to have a larger crop of these wonderful tubers next time!

As always, I’m so very grateful to have you here in the garden with me. Thanks so much for reading this! Please also check out my heirloom gardening and vegan cooking blog Shovel and Crunch, and follow my social media pages. And sharing with others is always most welcome. Thanks!❤️

🌱Shell

🌿Please find the full recipe on my global vegan cooking and heirloom gardening blog, Shovel and Crunch: Lavande Vanille Royale Champagne Cocktail.

And you can check out my other recipes and gardening posts at Shovel and Crunch, and follow my social media pages.

🌻And below you can subscribe for free to get my recipe and garden posts and newsletters delivered straight to your mailbox. Thanks so much for joining me on this exciting cooking and gardening adventure! And sharing this post is most welcome. I’m so glad you’re here!

🌱Shell

🌿Please find the full recipe on my global vegan cooking and heirloom gardening blog, Shovel and Crunch: Rosemary Spiced Pecans.

These pecans are also featured in my comfy and flavor-packed harvest salad, Spinach Arugula Salad with Black Garlic Vinaigrette.

And you can check out my other recipes and gardening posts at Shovel and Crunch, and follow my social media pages.

🌻And below you can subscribe for free to get my recipe and garden posts and newsletters delivered straight to your mailbox. Thanks so much for joining me on this exciting cooking and gardening adventure! And sharing this post is most welcome. I’m so glad you’re here!

🌱Shell

🌿Please find the full recipe on my global vegan cooking and heirloom gardening blog, Shovel and Crunch: Authentic Pain Aux Noix (French Walnut Bread) Recipe.

And you can check out my other recipes and gardening posts at Shovel and Crunch, and follow my social media pages.

🌻And below you can subscribe for free to get my recipe and garden posts and newsletters delivered straight to your mailbox. Thanks so much for joining me on this exciting cooking and gardening adventure. And sharing this post is most welcome. I’m so glad you’re here!

🌱Shell

🌿Please find the full recipe on my global vegan cooking and heirloom gardening blog, Shovel and Crunch: Sweet Danish Vegan Parsnip Salad with Apple and Carrot

And you can check out my other recipes and gardening posts at Shovel and Crunch, and follow my social media pages.

🌻And below you can subscribe for free to get my recipe and garden posts and newsletters delivered straight to your mailbox. Thanks so much for joining me on this exciting cooking and gardening adventure! And sharing this post is most welcome. I’m so glad you’re here!

🌱Shell

🌿Please find the full recipe on my global vegan cooking and heirloom gardening blog, Shovel and Crunch: Spinach Arugula Salad with Black Garlic Vinaigrette.

And you can check out my other recipes and gardening posts at Shovel and Crunch, and follow my social media pages.

🌻And below you can subscribe for free to get my recipe and garden posts and newsletters delivered straight to your mailbox. Thanks so much for joining me on this exciting cooking and gardening adventure. And sharing this post is most welcome. I’m so glad you’re here!

🌱Shell

I’ve tried to keep this post quick. But I can’t help it when these beautiful crops are just begging to be photographed as they grow strong and await the harvest. I hope you can make it through this long photo tribute!

The days are getting shorter, the air more crisp, and the garden is breathing a long sigh of contentment after a beautiful summer. The main harvest is slowing, but there are some cold-loving crops in the ground that are still going strong.

And I know, we’ve all been growing, weeding, and watering for months, and ready to be done. But the snow and cold will be here before we know it (at least for me; someday I’ll live somewhere that’s warm year-round), and then we’ll be gazing longingly at our garden photos and just wishing we could go back to the warmth.

I get crochety about gardening as early as July, so I totally get it. You don’t want to have a hot mic on me when I’m out there watering my many, many pots of mint on three levels with my pulley system I rigged to get the hose up to the balcony. I can get pretty creative with my tired-of-gardening profanity.

But nothing in life that’s worth it is easy, right? That’s why we’re going to keep going. Come on, do it with me! Let’s take a look at what’s going on in the garden while we still can.

🥭Fruit

Ground cherry / cape gooseberry

These little stunners from the Solanaceae family (aka nightshades, the same family that also includes potatoes, tomatoes, eggplant, and peppers) were a nice surprise this year. I didn’t even plant them, so they all came up as reseeded volunteers from last year’s planting.

These sprawling, low-growing plants are effortless to grow, ridiculously productive, and they drop these little lantern-ensconced fruit gems whenever they’re ripe.

Their flavor is unique, and I find it to me most akin to a combination of orange and vanilla custard. Others find notes of pineapple, apricot, and caramel. They become more deeply sweet as they ripen.

The varieties I grew last year, from which this year’s crop has resprouted (except for the uvilla, as I’ll explain below), are:

• Aunt Molly’s

• Cossack

• Drott’s yellow

• New hanover

• Uvilla

The uvilla one, native to Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia, didn’t ripen in time last year before the cold arrived. It’s from the species Physalis peruviana, whereas the first 3 of the others others are from the species Physalis pruinosa; and the New hanover is sometimes labelled as pubescens. And like with the other 4 varieties, I had started the uvilla early under my grow lights. I think I just live too far north for this one to stand a chance.

While the other varieties above have a days to maturity range of 65-80 days, the uvilla is 100-120 days. My growing season isn’t quite long enough to grow them successfully in most years. If any of you have grown this variety successfully, I’d love to know how they did for you. They’re supposed to be larger than the others, with a sharper, more tart and sweet tropical flavor.

But since I didn’t plant any of them this year, and they came back up on their own from last year’s fallen fruit, I’m grateful for this little harvest. I’d love to make them into a sweet and roasty galette with the edges of the crust folded over and sprinkled with sugar onto this jammy goodness. If only I had more than this little harvest to work with to do some multi-trial recipe testing. But I’ll take what I can get, and I know it’ll be delicious!

I’ve seen these occasionally at grocery stores (Trader Joe’s for sure, as I recall), and labeled as “golden berries.” If you find some, and especially if you’d like to try growing your own, I encourage you to go for it!

Roselle

Roselle is a type of hibiscus grown for its flower calyces (the cup-like structures that hold the flower petals), which have a a wonderful tart flavor to add to drinks, jams, and sauces. Although this crop is technically floral tissue, I use it as I would a fruit in the kitchen, so I’m categorizing it here.

Both this year and last year, I’ve only managed to get the calyces to begin forming before the cold has taken down the plants. For harvesting, I would need the flowers to emerge, and then to harvest the calyces after the petals drop.

This is my second year trying to grow roselle. The variety in the photo below is Doc’s northern Florida. I just don’t have a long enough growing season here in southeast Michigan, USDA hardiness zone 6A to get enough of a harvest. The days to maturity of this variety are 120-140 days from transplant.

So even starting these seeds weeks early indoors under my lights, I haven’t managed to get these guys ready to harvest. And in researching other varieties, it doesn’t look like there are good contenders for types that mature much earlier. They’re cute, though, aren’t they?

I love to have roselle in herbal tea blends, and in refreshing summer drinks like lemonade. For now, I’ll keep buying them dried so I can keep enjoying them until I can move to a warmer climate and try again!

🥕Veggies

Lagos spinach

This is a celosia, as you may have noticed from the flowers. And it also has wonderful heat-tolerant leafy greens! I love crops with multiple functions.

You can see that the leaves have now matured and bronzed, compared to how the plant looked earlier in the summer from the photo below.

Chinese pink celery

This beautiful bright pink celery is simple to grow, and it has an enticingly-fresh and complex celery flavor. I found it to be surprisingly salty and savory. I really love this crop. But then again, my favorite and hard-to-find pop (Soda people, don’t even start right now, lol) is Doc Brown’s Cel-Ray. When I find a can of this at a good deli, it’s the best day ever. This celery-flavored drink is just sublime!

Gobbo di nizzia cardoon

This is my first year growing cardoons, and I’m so excited. I still have never tasted them yet! As they near fully ripening in the garden, I need to start researching the best way to try cooking them. I know they’re traditionally enjoyed in parts of Europe over the winter holidays. I’ve only seen them in a local grocery store once in my life (!), so I’ve always wanted to try growing them myself to have a chance to try them out.

I’m just reading now to my surprise that cardoons aren’t just a member of the artichoke family; rather they ARE artichoke plants. Some varieties are grown for their thick and tender stalks, like my gobbo di nizzia variety that I’m growing, and others are bred for their large, edible flower heads that we enjoy as artichokes.

We LOVE artichokes. We have them as an occasional treat with “Mémé sauce,” the French vinaigrette named after my mother-in-law’s special version. The kids would even ask for us to make artichokes with Mémé sauce for their birthday dinners when they were little. I only wish our climate here in zone 6A were just a little warmer to be able to grow and harvest globe artichokes in our garden.

And now that I know that cardoons are actually the stems from the very same crop as artichokes, rather than just close relatives, I just KNOW they’re going to be delicious. I can’t wait to try them!

My cardoons aren’t likely to make it until anywhere near the winter holidays as they do in Europe, as the cold will take them down well before then. So I need to hurry up and figure out a wonderful way to enjoy them while I can. I’ll keep you posted!

5-color silverbeet chard

Swiss chard (known as silverbeet in Australia and New Zealand) is such a bright and productive crop. The stems and leaves are both edible, and the color is marvelous. These make wonderful greens.

Vulcan swiss chard

🥬Herbs

Annual herbs

Shiso

From my earlier newsletters this summer, you know I love my shiso! This is an herb that deserves so much more recognition in the US. It’s such an important herb in Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and China. It’s in the mint family, Lamiaceae, and it has the most intriguing flavor combination of cumin, cinnamon, and earthiness. I just adore it.

Hojiso shiso

Red shiso

Green ohba ao shiso

38N Kkaennip Korean shiso

And here’s a little friend who was out with me helping to take photos. I don’t mind that he likes to eat holes in my basil and shiso leaves. There are plenty of leaves out there for me to enjoy too.

Basil

I’ve finally given in at the end of the season and let the poor basil go to flower. All summer long, I’ve been pruning off the flowers to promote more vegetative growth, rather than reproductive growth. By removing the flowers, this keeps the plant’s energy in the leaves, rather than turning dull and woody and trying to make seeds.

But now the basil has had its turn to bloom. And the flowers are glorious!

Golden mountain sweet Thai basil

Christmas basil

I have so many beautifully flowering basils. And the bees are everywhere! I just love to listen to their steady thrum as I work in the garden. And this late in the season, I often find them asleep on the flowers. It’s just adorable.

Shungiku

This is my first year growing the edible chrysanthemum shungiku. The plants are tiny, as they didn’t germinate for me under my grow lights. So I tried again mid-season by just direct sowing the rest of my seed pack into the herb garden. They sprouted well, but the season by then was pretty short for them. Still, I’m glad to have managed to get some growth at all. I’ll have to try starting them again under my grow lights.

This plant is in the daisy family Asteraceae, and it’s widely-enjoyed in Asia for its leafy greens. It thrives in cool weather, so it’s doing well right now. But it’s an annual, so I need to try again next year. I’m really looking forward to giving it a longer growing season next time and seeing how it does.

Here’s another shungiku flower variation. So cute!

Spiked thyme

This thyme (Thymbra spicata) is less cold-hardy, and I need to grow it as an annual in zone 6A. Still, I love the spindled leaves and deep pink flowers. It’s known for its notes of camphor, thyme, and oregano.

And it’s often included in traditional za’atar spice blends from the Levantine region, which I like to grow several herbs for in my garden. The other herbs I also grow for this include:

• Syrian oregano

• Common thyme

• Royal thyme (Thymbra capitata)

• Marjoram

• Greek oregano

• Lebanese savory

I haven’t yet grown my own sesame, which would also be fun to do. And sumac grows wild all over near me here in USDA hardiness zone 6A. These ingredients are also often part of traditional za’atar spice blends.

Lemon mint marigold

A beautiful culinary marigold from Mexico. My scent and flavor notes include: floral perfume, fresh, sweet, lush meadows, lemon, blond wood, fresh spring air, new clothes, young grasses, iced tea, and cool mornings.

This little guy is totally asleep. I love it!

Sweet / Mexican marigold

Here are my scent and flavor notes for this variation: So pleasant and similar to tarragon; delightful, green, botanical, fresh clean water, toasted coiander seeds, roasted grapes, papaya, cucumber, lemon, grapefruit, mint, fresh rain.

Perennial herbs

Hairy mountain mint

Mountain mint is in the mint family Lamiaceae, but the genus Pycnanthemum, which differs from more common garden mints in the genus Mentha.

Here are my scent and flavor notes for hairy mountain mint: Deep, vintage mint, sage, light smokiness, cold mountain streams, sugarcane, enjoyably bracing, mature, refined, elegant, freshly-chopped wood, aged cabin, lemony, crisp fall air.

Virginia mountain mint

This is another mint in the Pycnanthemum genus. My scent and flavor notes: Refreshingly minty in a menthol nasal way, sage, campfire, old books, smoky, antique store, reclaimed wood, mexican oregano, grilled vegetables, smoked hickory, old yellowed parchment, roasted lemons, rich soil, petrichor, 80s garden hose water.

Winter savory

This is an herb garden classic that is finally beginning to flower. I love seeing these tiny blooms on it in the fall.

Hidcote lavender

I’m surprised that my lavender is still in flower into the fall this year! This must be a testament to our warmer weather this fall. I’ll definitely take it.

Apricot sprite agastache

I love growing agastache, including anise hyssop and several other varieties with beautiful fragrance and flowers. This short-statured variety is no exception. I have it growing in my herb garden fountain this year.

Rose mint agastache

This one is wonderful too, with a delightful fragrance like lavender, rose, and lemon.

Rose petal thyme

This is one of my hands-down favorite thymes. The rose fragrance is incredible! Here is is planted between boulders, where it really thrives.

American dittany

This is my first year growing this perennial, which I started indoors under my grow lights. The toughest thing for me about growing perennials is waiting until the second year to see them finally flower. But this guy obliged me with an adorable bloom at the end of the first growing season! Hopefully next year we’ll have a lot of elegant flowers like this when it comes back up next spring.

🌻Flowers

Annual flowers

Nasturtiums

This is a flower I simply always have to grow each year. It’s beautiful, thrives in poor soil, drought, and part shade, blooms in the fall when most other plants are in decline, and the leaves and flowers are both edible! They taste peppery, like arugula. I just adore this plant.

Here’s how it looks in a landscaping bed right now. I’ve planted several beds like this. It’s an inexpensive way to fill in some landscaping areas if you’re not ready to spring for more expensive shrubs.

It nearly killed me in the 2 days it took me to plant the thousands of seeds I added all over my landscaping. The seeds are large, and they come up most reliably if you poke each one individually into the soil.

I was hobbling around in back pain for hours after this. But it was worth it, because after this first year planting, this annual reseeds itself really well. I don’t know how the plants germinate so well from reseeding when sprinkling them the first year isn’t nearly as effective.

I’m assuming it’s because of all of the soil shifting during the freeze and thaw cycles over the winter and spring. Whatever the reason, letting them resprout all on their own has worked really well for me.

So next year, and hopefully from now on, all I’ll have to do is see where the plants are sprouting, and add some additional seeds wherever there are gaps. Simple! And just look how gorgeous the flowers are:

The yellow and orange ones are the most classic colors, but these days, there are so many striking varieties in all sorts of shades if you look through the vendors online. I’ve found mine this year from Baker Creek Seeds and Eden Brothers.

Sunflowers

These amazing blooms give you such stunning colorful displays for so little effort. They’re annuals, like the nasturtiums, and they also grow best when planted as seeds directly into the soil. They’re practically effortless.

And look how amazing the flowers are. I have seeds for sunflowers as low as 18 inches (46 cm) to as tall as 12 feet (3.7 m). I tend to prefer the ones in the middle, at 4-6 feet (1.2 to 1.8 m), since they don’t start to lean as much when the flower heads get heavy in late summer and into the fall.

Plus, there are so many brilliantly-colored variations in the mid-height range. And the stalks are easier to take down in late fall when the blooms are done.

After the flowers are done, and I’ve harvested the stalks, I like to leave the giant seed-filled flower heads out for the animals to enjoy.

Snapdragon, bizarre mixed

This is such a striking variety. I love the splotches of vibrant pink. Snapdragons have always been one of my favorite flowers. I’ve sprinkled photos of several varieties in my newsletters throughout this summer.

I’d like to branch out some more and try out an even larger variety next year. Snapdragons are just stunning, and so much fun for the kids to snap open and closed when they were little.

Plus, the dried seed pods look just like little skulls. The kids always loved this part too.

Perennial flowers

Yarrow

This is my first year growing yarrow. The tiny flowers come in a huge spectrum of colors, and the delicate filigreed leaves lend some nice textural interest.

The leaves and flowers are slightly bitter and herbaceous, and can be used as edible garnishes or added sparingly to salads, soups, and stews.

While I grow flowers that are edible whenever I can, I’m also interested in this perennial plant for its use in permaculture. It’s a huge pollinator magnet, as well as a dynamic accumulator. The deep roots pull up favorable minerals, which makes them available for the nearby shallow-rooted plants.

Yarrow also improves soil structure, speeds decomposition due to its high nitrogen content, and encourages biodiversity by attracting predatory insects to reduce pest populations.

This plant has so many great advantages, and it’s beautiful to boot. I’m going to look into expanding my selection for next year.

Hydrangea

I’ve always been partial to hydrangeas. Especially the panicle varieties like the one below with the huge cone-shaped blossoms that deepen in color as the summer moves into fall. This one was already at our new house when we bought it, so I’m not sure of the variety.

It looks to be a dwarf cultivar, as it’s much smaller than the large vanilla strawberry panicle type I’ve planted in the past. But I love these blooms, the hardiness and resilience of this shrub after I’ve moved it around a few times, and its ability to grow on new wood. This makes pruning much more forgiving than with some of the vintage (and yet also beautiful) mophead varieties I’ve grown that only bloom on old wood (the previous year’s stems).

🍂Fall garden slowdown

The cold has made its inexorable creep into the gardens. While I still have some cold-hardy greens ripening, my real-time crop newsletters will soon need to be replaced with more cooking posts with the harvests.

This is of course really exciting, as I love the ever-changing nature of my job. I’m always switching from weeding, photo shoots, recipe testing, recipe trial result yelling, LOL; global food photo prop research, seed and plant research, reading more about permaculture, regenerative agriculture, and important heirloom crops, writing blog posts and newsletters, etc.

If I ever get crabby about one facet of my job, I have another one waiting in the wings to make it refreshing again. As my daughter Sophie always reminds me when I go stark raving mad about the frozen horrors of our impending winter, “Mom, you’d lose your mind if you were able to garden and had to weed year-round.”

Which is so true, but does it outweigh 9 months of freezing to death and shouting my most creative expletives into the 4PM darkness? Soon we’ll see. (Insert diabolically evil laugh….)

As always, I’m so very grateful to have you here in the garden with me. Thanks so much for reading this! Please also check out my heirloom gardening and vegan cooking blog Shovel and Crunch, and follow my social media pages. And sharing with others is always most welcome. Thanks!❤️

🌱Shell

I found out this year what happens if you don’t pick your amaranth. You will ALWAYS have amaranth.

Last fall I hadn’t harvested the tops fast enough, and the seeds found their way all over the garden. So this spring, I found it trying to take over the place. It’s beautiful, though, and so versatile. It’s basically several crops in one, which is fantastic to have when your space is limited like mine.

Here are the varieties I’ve planted:

• Callaloo

• Chicago callaloo

• Chinese multicolor spinach

• Hopi red dye

• Pink beauty

• Red stem

• Vita cypriot

Look how gorgeous they are! And they’re ridiculously easy to grow.

The uses for amaranth include eating the leaves as edible greens, cooking with the seeds as a grain, baking with the flour, and even using the flowers as a dye.

Below are my beans growing up my amaranth stalks, as I hadn’t gotten out into the garden in time to build a bean trellis. So you may have seen in an earlier newsletter that I called this my “two sisters,” like the Native American symbiotic “three sisters” trio of beans, corn, and squash, which grow lovingly intertwined.

This has worked out wonderfully! I wish I could forget my trellis for every crop and have such a coincidentally fabulous outcome.

Here you can see my blauhilde pole beans climbing the amaranth effortlessly. And the amaranth didn’t mind at all.

I love the deeply mahogany leaves and flowers in hopi red dye amaranth. And I sure found out why this plant is used as a dye when I harvested the flowers. They turned my hands the most brilliant red.

This one below is pink beauty. Just gorgeous!

Here’s the spread of the flowers after my big harvest. Sorry about the harsh lighting in these next few photos. I had spread the flowers out on an outdoor table, with the seeds scattering everywhere. I didn’t dare bring them inside where I could better control the light. I would have been vacuuming for hours!

I’ve separated the leaves I found on the flowering tops, so I could add them later to my big leaf harvest.

Here I’ve set the flowers out to dry, as I found it tough to destem them and shake out the seeds while the flower heads still had some moisture.

The funny thing is, these were drying so well, and then I forgot that it was going to rain overnight. So I awoke to soaking wet flowers and seeds.

Then I had to put them into the oven to compensate, at the lowest temperature that it would go. After several hours of rotating many trays, the seeds and flowers were finally dry.

But separating the two was no joke! After destemming the flowers, I found that the chaff was about the same size and weight as the tiny seeds. And the now-dry flower bracts had become, as my daughter Mio described them, “stabby.” This effort definitely required gloves.

I muddled my way through, even trying to soak the seed and chaff mixture, reading that the chaff might float. Nope, not even close. So then I had to dry it all out in the oven AGAIN. By then, I was so over the amaranth, and I’d read that my hopes to pop the seeds like popcorn would likely be dashed by all of the rounds of wetting, drying, and heating.

I tried it anyway, though, as I thought it would be really great to have tiny popped amaranth like miniature popcorn. Before trying my new homegrown batch of seeds, I tried popping a jar of amaranth that I’ve had for probably decades. They popped a little, barely at all. Then I tried with a nice, new, high-quality batch from the store. These ones also barely popped.

And then I tried my homegrown half-and-half batch of seeds and chaff. (I’d given up by then to separate them fully. ) This bowl below is all I managed to get, by the way, from ALL of those flower heads in the photo above. Ugh.

Thankfully, despite all of the rounds of rain, heating, drying, soaking, heating, and drying again, some of these seeds from the garden actually popped; at least at a slightly higher rate than the store-bought ones. What a lot of work to get there, though!

There are still so many ways I can try to use my seeds (with the leftover chaff as fiber, I guess, sigh.) I’m still thinking this over, as I only have the one bowl of them for my dastardly cooking experiments.

Below are the stunningly fresh and colorful leaves that I harvested after the flowers. I could have kept the flowers pruned off throughout the season to encourage more leaves. But as amaranth is a fairly new crop for me, I wanted to experience the whole gamut. So my leaf harvest wasn’t as glorious as it could have been. But for the flowers, it was worth it.

Look at how amazing these leaves are! These make my heart just melt with lush botanical joy.

And here are the greens that I’ve cooked up to eat over rice. They’re so indescribably earthy, smoky, and comforting. I’m eating another bowl of them right now while I type this newsletter. Just amazing.

I still have yet to try out using amaranth as a dye. And I know that to keep them manageable for the following year, I need to make sure to pick the flower heads BEFORE the seeds start falling in autumn. That is, unless I want a huge bumper crop like I had this year. But then again, my celery, lagos spinach, and swiss chard did not appreciate being overrun this year by amaranth volunteers! They’re all breathing a huge sigh of relief right now, since I’ve removed the interlopers to give them some room.

As always, I’m so very grateful to have you here in the garden with me. Please check out my heirloom gardening and vegan cooking blog Shovel and Crunch, and follow my social media pages. And sharing with others is most welcome. Thanks!❤️

🌱Shell

👉 Get the full recipe at Shovel and Crunch

🥕Thanks so much for joining me in the garden.

Shell

In my post, I share the 5 types of tulsi I’ve added to this recipe: camphor kapoor, krishna, rama, temperate, and vana. Each one has its own special fragrance, color, and growth habit to contribute to this time-honored tea drink. (You could use just one or any blend of tulsi varieties to make this yourself.)

For this inviting tulsi masala chai, I’ve used black tea and added an invigorating and soothing blend of spices, non-dairy milk, jaggery (or sugar), and the tulsi leaves. I’ve steeped them all together to create a heartwarming, sweet, and creamy cup of love. I hope you’ll grow some tulsi in your herb garden and try this drink that’s deeply delicious and rewarding.

🌿Please find all of my tulsi varieties and the full recipe on my global vegan cooking and heirloom gardening blog, Shovel and Crunch: Vegan Tulsi Masala Chai Recipe with Garden Holy Basil

And you can check out my other recipes and gardening posts at Shovel and Crunch, and follow my social media pages.

🌻And below you can subscribe for free to get my recipe and garden posts and newsletters delivered straight to your mailbox. Thanks so much for joining me on this exciting cooking and gardening adventure! And sharing this post is most welcome. I’m so glad you’re here!

🌱Shell