Rajesh Chaudhary 
Botanically, butternut squash is a fruit because it: However, culinarily it’s classified as a vegetable due to its savory taste and cooking uses. Both classifications are technically correct depending on context. What you’ll learn in … Read more
Last summer, my neighbor Karen knocked on my door holding a basket of tomatoes from her garden. Beautiful, deep red Brandywines. But she looked worried. “My sister told me these are nightshade vegetables,” she said. … Read more
Last summer, I brought in a basket of perfectly ripe tomatoes from my garden. Three days later, my kitchen looked like a science experiment gone wrong. Tiny flies swarmed every surface. They hovered over my … Read more
A woman at our community garden in South Florida brought in a bag of star fruit last fall. She had a tree in her backyard that was producing more than her family could handle. Probably … Read more
My uncle used to call lettuce “crunchy water.” Said it was pointless filler. Just something restaurants put on plates to make the food look bigger. He grew tomatoes, peppers, beans—anything with obvious substance. Lettuce? Waste … Read more
Last spring, I harvested about fifteen heads of lettuce in one week. My raised beds had gone wild after an unusually mild winter. I was drowning in greens. So I did what any reasonable person … Read more
I got into an argument at a garden club meeting last spring that I still think about. A newer member was explaining her raised bed layout. She pointed to her potato section and said she … Read more
The first time I saw a lotus bloom in person, I understood why entire religions formed around this plant. It was at a botanical garden in St. Louis. Mid-July. Hot as blazes. And there were … Read more
Last August, I harvested about thirty cucumbers in a single week. The plants went absolutely wild after we got three days of steady rain following a dry spell. I was handing them out to neighbors, … Read more
My daughter asked me this question last summer while we were picking cucumbers from our raised beds. She was seven. I gave her a confident wrong answer. Said they were vegetables, obviously. Where else do … Read more
A woman named Lin taught me about taro at a community garden in San Jose three years ago. She was 74, had been growing vegetables since she was a kid in Taiwan, and she laughed … Read more
Last summer, my strawberry patch went absolutely wild. I’m talking buckets of berries every few days for three weeks straight. My neighbor Carol saw me hauling the fifth harvest basket to my kitchen and yelled … Read more