Seems like some of you were surprised to discover that I don’t always follow all of the conventional and established rules of vegetable gardening: “I really like your website… your honesty about breaking a cardinal rule and not hardening off your cool weather seedlings, got my attention!”

“What would you say are your favorite half dozen vegetables?” Hmmm, that’s easy enough isn’t it? Well actually it’s a rather difficult question because there are so many interesting vegetable varieties that I really enjoy growing in my raised bed garden. And just like on those popular cellular commercials, someone is going to be left out!

“I want to grow artichokes this year up here in the Boston area. I have ordered the seeds and am wondering when to start them, when to transplant and if I will get any edible buds this season. Isn’t there a way to “fool” Mother Nature into thinking this is the second season?” – David P

It used to be that the new vegetable seed catalogs would start to show up in my mailbox sometime after New Years. Well times have changed and guess what arrived in my mailbox right around Thanksgiving? Yep, the first new vegetable seed catalog of the year.

Would you like to grow a vegetable in the garden that was prolific as grass in that you can cut it once, and cut it again, but it just continues to grow and yield additional harvests of delicious produce? Well that’s kind of the idea behind the veggies that are classified as cut and come again crops. Usually found in the form of leafy green vegetables, these baby veggies and micro-greens will provide you with the convenience of multiple harvests from a single planting.

This article is a guest entry written by Susan Warren, author of a new book about the art of competitive pumpkin growing – Backyard Giants: The Passionate, Heartbreaking, and Glorious Quest to Grow the Biggest Pumpkin Ever. Today Susan shares the story of her own interesting quest to grow a gigantic pumpkin in the home garden…

Well it looks like many backyard gardeners are still busy harvesting, preserving, and enjoying the fruits of their labor in the vegetable garden. Here are some interesting gardening links to photos and articles detailing what’s growing and being discussed on other sites and gardens that I’ve visited this week:

Today’s article about hydroponics is a guest entry here at Veggie Gardening Tips and was written by Charlene Rennick. Charlene provides helpful tips and ideas that enable you to use hydroponics to grow fresh vegetables over an extended growing season: