Carmen DeVito

Once you’ve made it past the last frost (for New York, that was May 15), it’s the perfect time to plant a taste of Italy! Carmen demonstrates how to grow tomatoes, basil, and radicchio in your backyard. You’ll be able to enjoy Caprese salads, use them as building blocks for pastas and pizza, and can your bumper crops of tomatoes to enjoy them all winter long.

Just because you’re in a small space, doesn’t mean you can’t grow berries, grapes, and citrus! Carmen is back to give us a tour around her backyard to demonstrate how she grows strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, and lemons. Plus, she shows us her 45-year-old grape vine and shares tips on how to increase your grape yield by pruning and repotting vine cuttings.

So, you’ve planted your edible garden. What now? This week, Carmen shows you a variety of herbs and flowers you can add to your beds or containers to provide fragrance, color, and eventually, flavor. She demonstrates a DIY technique for drying these herbs, so you can use enjoy their fragrance, or use them in cooking, all year round.

There’s so much to love about edible flowers – from squash blossoms and chives to nasturtiums and violas. There are as many culinary applications as there are varieties!

Carmen DeVito shows you how to plant your own assortment of edible flowers, so you can brighten up your garden and your kitchen. Her tricks for planting several flowers together will turn your backyard into an edible oasis that might look too good to eat.

Stay tuned to meet Laurell Sims of Urban Growers Collective. She shares lots of creative ways to use edible flowers in your cooking – from chive blossom vinegar to nasturtium ‘lily pad’ soup.

Nutrient-dense crops like shelling peas, snow peas, and leafy greens are excellent additions to your backyard garden. This week, Carmen shows you how easy is is to plant peas and lettuces side-by-side. She also explains the difference between the two types of peas (bush and climbing), and demonstrates how to make a DIY trellis for the climbing varieties that can grow as tall as six feet!

Herbs like parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme are easy to grow, even with limited space, and they provide a constant source of flavor for your home kitchen. Carmen DeVito, host of We Dig Plants on HRN, demonstrates the basics of repotting culinary herbs from her Brooklyn backyard.

With just a few tools and a mix of potting soil and compost, you too can care for a thriving herb garden! Listen to We Dig Plants on HRN: heritageradionetwork.org/series/we-dig-plants