Every month, Heavy Petal collaborates with Willowtree — a website for those with food sensitivities who want to find their culinary bliss — to bring you a celebration of an in-season edible. I’ll tell you how to grow it; they’ll tell you how to eat it. Yay!

With such a slow start to summer and a spring that seemed to redefine “cool and damp,” the Willowtree gals and I had radishes coming out of our ears. I have to admit that I didn’t really mind when my last sowing of radishes bolted in the recent warmth; I’d long since grown tired of radish salads and salted radishes and… well, what else can you do with a radish?

If you’re Jackie and Tina, you make salsa. Read on for the recipe and growing tips.

Ever lamented the fact that you don’t have enough sun to grow food? Rejoice! There are edibles you can grow in shade—even indoors (and it’s definitely easier than making a mushroom log). Here’s how to grow mushrooms indoors using a mushroom kit.

Last month, on my birthday, I picked up a few things to make my favourite kind of lunch: a couple of gooey, stinky cheeses; a good, crusty baguette; some nice olives; paté; and an arugula salad tossed with balsamic and olive oil. And because it was my birthday, some bubbles.

While at Whole Foods, I noticed kits for growing oyster mushrooms indoors (by fresh-thinking Back to the Roots). They were compact, utilized recycled materials (used coffee grounds! Hello!), and (here’s what really got me) had irresistible packaging. So, because it was my birthday, I bought one.

Can’t believe I forgot to mention the peas! We have peas. Lots of ‘em, in fact. These are ‘Sugar Ann,’ a snap pea that grows to about 2ft. tall (and thus doesn’t require staking. Yay!)

Are you growing peas this year? What are your favourite varieties?

And one more thing: Sugar Snaps! Yippee!

Last year I decided to introduce a series of blog posts I called “Now Harvesting.” Every week or two, I chronicled the food coming out of my garden. I thought it would be a good way to identify lulls; times when my garden wasn’t producing to its full potential. It would, I thought, help me become a better planner, and thus, grow more food.

Um…yeah. It’s a good idea in theory.

Unfortunately, I don’t think better planning could have helped my garden during this dismal spring. Lack of sunlight and warmth conspired to keep even the coolest of the cool-season edibles stunted and sad.

But things are looking up! I’ve been harvesting arugula and radishes for a couple of weeks, and now the lettuce is really starting to put in some effort.

Funnily enough, this time last year my Now Harvesting post didn’t look all that different than this: greens and radishes. The only difference was that I’d been eating them for at least a month. This? This was my first homegrown salad of 2011. And damn, it was good.

Now harvesting: ‘Red Sails’ lettuce, ‘Garden Ferns’ heirloom Italian lettuce, arugula (leaves and flowers), ‘French Breakfast’ radishes.

What are you harvesting now?

I’m thrilled to announce a new monthly feature on Heavy Petal: a collaboration between me and Willowtree, a beautiful and informative website created by my friend Jackie Connelly (the woman behind the gorgeous photographs in Sugar Snaps and Strawberries) and her sister, Tina.

“Willowtree provides information and inspiration to people with all types of food sensitivities and intolerances to help them live a hopeful, healthy and informed life,” write Jackie and Tina. “We have been struggling with food sensitivities for most of our lives. We are first-hand, front line, food sensitivity mavens.”

But despite catering to some very specific dietary needs, Willowtree isn’t a niche site. Jackie and Tina believe in eating whole foods—“local where possible, and organic if given the choice.” And that’s something I think we can all get behind.

Here’s how the feature works: Jackie, Tina and I will choose an in-season ingredient to profile. I’ll tell you how to grow it; they’ll tell you how to eat it. Fun, right?

Right now, we’re harvesting armloads of crispy rhubarb from our gardens, and while I’m freezing most of mine to pair with this summer’s strawberries in jams and pies, the Willowtree girls are already turning this delicious spring vegetable (yes, vegetable!) into Apple Rhubarb Crumble. Read on for the recipe and growing tips.

A few years ago, I became fascinated by the idea of growing grain. I explored small-space grain production, saw first hand how a community garden had integrated a grain-growing project into an attractive edible landscape, and pored over Small-Scale Grain Raising, Gene Logsdon’s classic text on small-space grains. But all my research didn’t change the fact that I couldn’t start even a teeny plot of wheat on my balcony. In fact, none of my many garden spaces was all that practical for growing grain. But the idea of a pocket-sized prairie has stuck with me, maybe because, with my feet firmly rooted on the West Coast (and, let’s face it, the city), I’ve never seen a wheat field up close. In my (fantasy-prone) brain, the iconic wheat field is romantic, wistful, sublime. (Prairie folk, please don’t disillusion me.)

So when I heard about Lawns to Loaves, an experiment in small-space urban grain growing, I jumped at the chance to participate. Lawns to Loaves is the brainchild of Chris Hergesheimer, aka the Flour Peddler. Vancouverites might know him as the guy who mills flour on a stationary bicycle (really!) and sells his whole wheat flours at farmer’s markets around the Lower Mainland and on the Sunshine Coast.

It may be miserable and wet outside, but it’s balmy here under the Gro-light.

It’s been so wet here in Vancouver that even if the soil weren’t too soaked to support seed growth, not even the most hardcore gardeners are braving the downpours to plant. Today, I literally ran out to the salad garden during a break in the rain, scattered some seeds (no time for actual, measured planting), and ran back inside just as the clouds opened.

Cold? Arugula thinks it’s perfect, thankyouverymuch.

And it’s cold. One might almost say unseasonable. But despite it being about 5°C cooler than optimal, I went ahead and planted my lettuce anyway. (Lettuce prefers temperatures between 15°C [60°F] and 21°C [70°F]).

And boy, did I plant lettuce:

‘Garden Babies Butterhead’ container lettuce from Renee’s Garden
‘Garden Ferns’ heirloom Italian lettuce from Renee’s Garden
‘Heirloom Cutting Mix’ (‘Speckled Troutback,’ ‘Blush Butter Cos,’ Red Ruffled Oak,’ ‘Sucrine,’ and ‘Devil’s Tongue’) baby leaf lettuce from Renee’s Garden
‘Red Sails’ looseleaf lettuce from West Coast Seeds
‘Esmeralda’ butterhead lettuce from West Coast Seeds

Oh, and some more radishes:

‘Crop Circle’ (heirloom ‘Purple Plum’) radishes from Soggy Creek Seed Co.

What are you sowing?

March is prime seed-starting month for many gardeners. Not only can we direct seed (plant outdoors) some of our cool-season veggie crops like arugula, Asian greens, broad beans, corn salad (mache), collards, kale, peas, spinach, and radishes, but we can also start many of our warm-season crops indoors for transplanting out once the weather warms.

I started a flat of seeds on the weekend, and I thought I’d share the process with you. I did it all indoors, on my coffee table, and managed to make very little mess. Here’s how:

Gather all your necessary ingredients: potting soil or seed-starting mix (a sterile blend of peat or coir, perlite, and vermiculite), a trowel, a large mixing bowl, a watering can, containers (recycled yogurt containers, homemade newspaper pots, or store-bought plastic cell packs), plant tags, and of course, seeds.

Chickweed (Stellaria media)

As I was weeding the salad garden yesterday, I found several small clumps of chickweed (Stellaria media). Appropriate that it was in the salad garden, because fresh, young chickweed makes a fabulous addition to a spring salad.

Now, I know what some of you are thinking. Oh god. I know where this is going. I am so *not* going to start “wild harvesting” lamb’s quarters and dandelion greens. And skeptics? I know where you’re coming from.

In fact, the original manuscript for my book included a sidebar on edible weeds, which I scrapped when I realized that as crunchy as I enjoy my granola, I’m not a let’s-make-”coffee”-out-of-this-dandelion-root kind of gal.

Finally! I’ve got some seeds in the ground. Normally I’d have had arugula, peas, radishes, and spinach started weeks ago, but all this travel has kept me away from the garden. I’m also totally disorganized this year (normally I’d have one or two of these filled out, too). Thankfully the weather cooperated this weekend and I was able to spend a few glorious hours in the garden.

Okay: there wasn’t much glory in it. I totally neglected to do any fall/winter clean-up, so those hours saw some serious debris removal and weeding.

I started with the salad garden, one of my five garden “areas,” and the most shady. Last year, it produced a ton of leafy greens, earning it the moniker “The Salad Garden.” Doesn’t look like much, right?

After some weeding and the addition of compost and some alfalfa meal (a nitrogen-rich fertilizer that those greens are gonna love), it was ready to plant. I do the “square-foot garden” thing with this particular bed – an intensive planting technique that works really well for greens. Only half the bed is mine (as you might have guessed from the above photo). These raised beds are in a common area of our townhouse complex and are shared with neighbours, which is pretty rad.