Adri Barr Crocetti

Homegrown is alright with me.

It’s never too early to plan a garden, and these days, with all the info on the Internet and all the mail order catalogs there is plenty to sift through. In just a few weeks it will be time to actually plant. Now is the time to do a little research.

Sure, if you are not in Italy, then you do not have the exact microclimate to grow a particular Italian vegetable or fruit. You do not have Italy’s indigenous soil either. But I am not going to quibble, and I am not going to let the purists stop me from growing my own, and neither should you. What greater joy is there than to walk into the garden with an empty trug and return to the kitchen, the trug brimming with fruits and vegetables grown with one’s own two hands, one’s own sweat and toil.

Don’t miss the thrill of seeing the tiny sprouting plants lift the dark, rich soil. Read the remainder of this entry »

Home grown is greater than store bought

Pick up your shovel and your hoe! Well, where the heck did winter go, and when did Spring arrive? The fever is rising. Spring is here, and that means time to prepare your soil and plan the garden. Bart and I performed our very own rite of Spring this morning when we went to Tomatomania!, the ne plus ultra of tomato sales.

The Tomatomania! folks gathered a dizzying array of tomato seedlings from which to choose. Hundreds of varieties, thousands of individual plants greeted us this morning when we drove to Tapia Brothers Farm in Encino, California. Read the remainder of this entry »

It may be too early to plant, but it is never too early to plan. From Arugula to Zahara Eggplant, gardeners are marking calendars and making lists, drawing up plans, checking availability and placing orders. In short we are getting hyped for summer.

Italians have a way with vegetables. There is just no doubt about it. And they have varieties that until recently were unavailable to us here in the United States. But now Italian seeds from companies such as Pagano and Franchi Sementi are available at many local nurseries. My neighborhood nursery, Sego in Studio City, California, has a large selection of Italian seeds. If your nurseryman does not carry them, Seeds from Italy will come to your aid. They are the exclusive U.S. mail order distributor for Franchi seeds, Italy’s oldest and best known seed supply. Over the years I have grown many vegetables from Franchi seeds, always with tremendous success. I urge you to plant their Zucchini Romanesco. This variant is creamy and tasty, a breed apart, easily the finest zucchini I have ever tasted. Currently the top seller at Seeds from Italy is Red Pear Tomato, another I heartily recommend. It is a big, but early tomato that will please every gardener and cook. Read the remainder of this entry »

Italian cuisine is not all about pasta. Oh no. The Italians have a way with vegetables. And they grow their own. They have developed the most magnificent array, and now we in America can buy Italian seeds. Yes, now you can grow Italian. Each year I see more and more imported Italian vegetable and herb seeds at garden centers, but the go to place remains Seeds from Italy. The number of their offerings is astounding – more than thirty varieties of radicchio and chicory alone. And it just keeps getting better – by September they expect to have Italian garlic – Sulmona from Abruzzo and Berrentina Piacentina from Piacenza. The list goes on – beans, cabbages, kale, cavolo, caulifower, endive, escarole, and I’m only to E.  My favorites, however are the pumpkins, le zucche.  You’ll find a tremendous selection, and you have never seen ones like those grown from Seeds from Italy. The only thing you will regret once you peruse their catalogue of imported Italian seeds is that your backyard garden is not larger. Life is good in the garden. Start planning!

Note: You can click on any picture to see a slide show of even more pictures!

I have no affiliation with any product, manufacturer, or site mentioned in this article.

Wake up!  It is time to start your gardens!

Each year Bart and I kick off our garden season with an early morning visit to day one of Tomatomania at Tapia Brothers Farm in Encino. Great name. Great event.

For tomato gardeners the Tomatomania seedling sale is the place to be. Gardeners are presented with a dizzying array of choices. And I do mean dizzying. Hundreds of varieties, thousands of plants, along with herbs, items for soil preparation and fertilizer. This is the time of year to shift into high gear for Spring and Summer gardening.

It is time to clean up the garden area, prepare the soil, decide what to plant and where to put it all, and purchase the plants. We had a ball this morning, looking at the seedlings, chatting with fellow gardeners and listening in on people’s comments about their favorite plants.

I picked up some favorites from last year including Juliet, Ananas Noire, and Sungold. I decided to try some new ones too. Among them are Jaune Flamme, Haley’s Purple Comet (couldn’t resist that one) and Green Envy. Let me say it was hard to choose and harder still to leave all those other little babies behind. Check their web site for a sale near you. If you can not find one, do not despair. They sell seedlings online.

The more I garden the more I am utterly amazed at the tremendous number of choices available to us. I love to grow unusual plants, and so over the years I have settled on a few specialty purveyors. For herb plants look no farther than Goodwin Creek Gardens. They have over 1000 herbs and plants including every herb you can think of and more varieties of lavender, thyme and geranium than I ever knew existed.

If it is peppers you are after, Cross Country Nurseries is the company for you. Again, more plants than you can imagine – hundreds in fact. Their catalogue lists the plants and their culinary uses. Another thing I love about their catalogue is the chart that gives the name and type of pepper, length, width, heat level and country of origin. What more could a gardener possibly ask for?

And finally, never again will you sneak seeds back home in your suitcase. Seeds from Italy is a specialty purveyor of heirloom seeds from Franchi Sementi of Bergamo, and from southern Italy the seeds of a very small company in Andria, Bari. This company is unmatched. Grow these seeds and you will be the talk of your neighborhood. Many of these are things you will never see in an American supermarket. They specialize in traditional heirloom Italian varieties, and lots of them – 9 types of arugula, 14 types of cima di rapa, 7 types of eggplant, 25 varieties of lettuce and 18 types of zucchini! Their catalogue also features growing instructions and recipes. Sign up online for their terrific newsletter.

A gardener’s life is good. I hope you decide to garden this summer. No one says you have to have a huge garden. Just grow something. Anything. Feel the dirt. Plant something, tend it and watch it grow. It’ll taste better than anything you ever bought in a store.

Note: You can click on any picture to see a slide show with even more pictures!

I have no affiliation with any product, manufacturer, or site mentioned in this article.