Vegetable Lover’s Shakshuka

Roisin Creedon-Carey chose to intern at Cornell Cooperative Extension to focus on sustainable agriculture practiced through community living. This is the final of three blog posts in her experience embracing seasonal eating as part of her student experience at St. Lawrence’s Adirondack Semester. Find the link to her recipe at the close of the article.

Yurt village in ADKS
Yurt village at Adirondack Semester, photo credit: St. Lawrence University

Every Friday, our assistant directors Will and Amanda, would leave the yurt village to do office work and run errands. The students would stay, attending classes and plugging away at woodworking projects, knowing that at 6:30 pm we would reconvene at the dinner table. Around 4:30, we would start to get antsy. We knew that they’d soon be back with mail, newspapers, and weather reports, but most importantly vegetables, meat, and eggs for the week ahead. A bell would ring, alerting us to their arrival. The ten of us would run to greet them and begin hauling in the boxes of goodies from the outside world.

As a group, we would divide and conquer. Some students would bring mail into the classroom, and others would trek vegetables from our Kent Family Growers share into the kitchen. We would shift the vegetables we still had on hand to the front of the pantry so they’d get used first. Read more Vegetable Lover’s Shakshuka

Time to plant your garlic!

For most gardeners, things have quieted down in the garden. It’s a time to clean and to review our successes and failures from the past growing season… but don’t put up your spade forks, shovels, and trowels just yet! It’s time to plant one of the easiest, healthiest, and tastiest of all garden vegetables: Garlic.

Garlic is grown on a different schedule from other vegetables. Late summer is the time to source seed garlic, choose a site and start preparing a garden bed. Mid-late October provides the window to divide bulbs, plant cloves, and mulch heavily before the cold weather sets in for good. Spring will see garlic emerging early along with spring flower bulbs. Some watering and side dressing will ensure a good harvest in July.

What makes garlic so easy to grow? Heavy mulching at planting time greatly reduces weed growth the following spring and summer, so weeding is usually not a problem.  Not only are garlic pests and diseases uncommon, but they can actually deter garden pests. A well-balanced soil high in organic matter and some occasional watering provide all your garlic will need. Let’s dig into the details of growing garlic successfully. Read more Time to plant your garlic!

Ripening Green Tomatoes Indoors

As temperatures get low at night our tomatoes will ripen more slowly and when the season has ended there will likely still be green tomatoes. There are tasty dishes you can make with green tomatoes but you can also ripen them indoors to prolong the season. Tomatoes need warmth and not sun to ripen.

So, how do you get green tomatoes to ripen indoors? It’s really very easy. Read more Ripening Green Tomatoes Indoors