We know that many of you are avid canners, jammers, picklers, and preservers. So we're curious: Have you "put up" anything yet this summer, and if so, what? More

Are you awash in pole beans, with nary a ripe tomato? Or perhaps you have a bumper crop of tomatoes and no zucchini this year. What if you could find a fellow gardener nearby who wanted to swap you some zucchini for some tomatoes? Wouldn't that be great?

Well, VeggieTrader, a brand new website for gardeners, is designed to do this very thing. More

Take one look at the imposing needle-like leaves on a rosemary plant, and you might wonder how anyone ever thought to put this herb in their mouths! But crush a few of those needles between your fingers, breathe in their pungent and mouth-watering aroma, and you'll understand. Do you like rosemary? More

How are your gardens growing? We haven't forgotten about gardening here, even though we haven't talked much about it lately. Here's one of the best surprises from my little garden this summer: eggplant! More

Tarragon is one of those herbs that we hardly ever think of using until we come across a recipe that specifically calls for it. We've even grown tarragon in our herb garden, only to reach the end of the summer without hardly touching it! Its licorice-like flavor can definitely make using tarragon a little tricky. How do you use tarragon in your cooking? More

Our favorite garden blogger, Margaret Roach of A Way To Garden, is spearheading a fun summer event called Summer Fest 2009 — a celebration of summer gardening, cooking, and fresh food.

One of the first entries in the first week of this cross-blog celebration is Margaret's own tip for storing herbs. She offers two different ways to freeze and preserve a whole summer's bounty of parsley and other herbs. One way was familiar to us, but the other way was something new! More

Those of us who live in the Northeast or Mid-Atlantic need to enjoy our tomatoes while we can. A fungus called late blight—a strain of which caused the Irish potato famine—is rapidly destroying loads of crops. You may want to check the tomatoes you're growing in your yard... More

I spent yesterday on the set of Cultivating Life, a television show about reconnecting with the land. No, no big sound-stage; no wardrobe and make-up trailers (which might have helped curtail my copious sweating). I was on the property belonging to the host, Sean Conway. It's a gorgeous nursery-turned-oasis in Tiverton, Rhode Island, where the show is filmed. I was Sean's guest for an episode about heirloom potatoes.

When I wasn't needed on set I got to wander the land, meeting the chickens and ducks, gawking at Sean's collection of props in one of the old greenhouses, and taking lots of notes on how he does things in his vegetable garden. Here are some highlights. More

With an estimated 600 acres of window sill growing space across the country, the UK's National Trust just launched a campaign encouraging apartment dwellers to plant window box vegetable gardens. While we are quite familiar with window sill herb gardening, we must admit we had never really thought of using the space for more substantial foods. More

I've escaped to the family farm for a bit this summer, just in time for making sauerkraut. It's an annual summertime tradition carried on by my parents as it was by my grandfather, great grandfather, and great-great-grandfather, Anton, before them. Each generation made “kraut” on this very same farm; this recipe and method have remained intact with a few simple ingredients and manual tools... More