Plants

Next time you loan a book from your public library, consider checking out some seeds, too. Yes, you read that right. More than two-dozen libraries across the country, including 15 in California, now let patrons borrow DIY plants along with copies of The Great Gatsby and Moby Dick. As NPR’s The Salt reported last week, this new offering could be a way to entice more people into the brick-and-mortar book buildings. Plus, it fosters community and makes accessible all different types of seeds.

In each issue of Audubon, the editors review a mix of narrative nonfiction titles, as well as art books and children’s books about nature. For ease, we’ve compiled the dozens of fantastic works we reviewed in 2012 in one place, and we’ve added a few additional books that we covered exclusively online.

Midwestern gardeners who aim to create native landscapes that provide important habitat to birds and other wildlife have a valuable new resource: “The Midwestern Native Garden, Native Alternatives to Nonnative Flowers and Plants, an illustrated Guide,” by Charlotte Adelman and Bernard L. Schwartz (Ohio University Press). In writing the book, the authors considered several of the major challenges faced by gardeners who want to grow natives. First, which plants are not native to a region? Second, what are alternative plants that are just as stunning and similarly capable of thriving in a garden that might otherwise be crowded with nonnative ornamentals.

^{Photograph by jespha/stock.xchng}

Nature, the great artificer, is always at work undermining her masterpieces. She adds an extraneous figure here or a grotesquerie there. There are a thousand discoveries to be made in that forest now sitting for its portrait in Technicolor purity.

Pomegranates have made a real leap to stardom the past few years, mostly in the form of their ruby red juice. But I personally love the seeds, called arils. And recently, I received two of these odd-shaped, aril-filled fruits as a gift—forcing me to think hard about how to use them. I have to say, I was pretty happy with the results.

During the past 15 weeks, I’ve written about much of the wonderful produce we got from our farm share. So you have all 72 recipes in one place, here’s a list, for your reference. Plus, a link to the original post.

Bok choy is hard to mistake for any other vegetable. It’s a leafy cabbage with thick white stalks that sprout up into large green leaves.

Joshua Marowitz hasn't slept in his own bed in two months. He's been on the road, cruising cross country on a jam-packed motorcycle, ending each day at a friend's or a stranger's house, or maybe a campsite. For more than 9,000 miles, he's been exposed to heat, rain, and monotony, but also extraordinary beauty—all because of plants.

Squash! We got our first two squash of the season (acorn and butternut) our past couple CSA pickups. I’m super-excited for the winter varietals, but it’s apparently not great they’re here this early.

“We have harvested winter squash a few weeks ahead of schedule this year,” our Mountain View Farm farmers told us in their weekly newsletter. “This is due to a combination of early hot, very dry weather followed by a very wet stretch of time in August. These unique conditions led to an early harvest and squash that will not store very well.” I guess that just means we’ll have to use them up faster than usual. Click through for some ideas how.
 

Potatoes can be whipped and mashed and shredded and roasted, fried and pancaked and thin-sliced and toasted. There are sweet ones and round ones and some shaped like fingers. And no matter the prep work, few leftovers linger.

That’s because potatoes are the #1 crop in the U.S., accounting for something like 15 percent of farm sale receipts, according to the USDA. And as we fall headfirst into autumn, the crisp air and turning leaves signal potato season for many. (Ninety percent of this tuber’s production happens during this time of year.)

For the third CSA pick-up in a row, we received a bag-full of potatoes, the perfect excuse to try out some new recipes and fall back on some oldies but goodies.