Visit from a Senator

Visit from a Senator

Wow, we had a pretty exciting visit from U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin earlier this month! Did you know that when consumers buy items online, websites are not required to display the country of origin for the product being sold because our labeling laws were written...

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Pickled Red Onions

Pickled Red Onions

Need a splash of red on your holiday table? Or a quick hostess gift? If you like onions give the following super easy recipe a try. Recipe: 1 large onion, thinly sliced, preferably red (if you have a mandoline, go for it) Brine: 1/2 cup cider vinegar 1 cup water 1 T....

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The December Garden

The December Garden

Winter in Wisconsin can sometimes be nice, but this December has started out as a lesson in dismal.   The picture above looking out to the garden area from the house was taken a week ago.  It was our first significant snow.  We received about four inches of really wet...

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Digging Potatoes

Digging Potatoes

I’m sure I’ve mentioned before that potatoes may not be the best value for work input for a home grower.  High-quality organic potatoes from the market are quite inexpensive, and certainly a better pure cost value than our homegrown spuds. However, I have no doubt...

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Raspberries Atop Oatmeal Pancakes for Two

Raspberries Atop Oatmeal Pancakes for Two

If you have ever considered planting raspberries in your home garden I highly recommend it.  Once they're established, other than once-a-year pruning, they are relatively carefree and can last nearly forever with occasional transplanting. And you can stand up to pick...

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Seven Tomato Recipes

Seven Tomato Recipes

Every year the tomatoes take over the kitchen. Besides our usual plain tomatoes and spaghetti sauce for the freezer, we've built up a collection of recipes that use this fabulous fruit. Here are just a few.  Maybe you'll find something new or be reminded of past...

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Tomato Harvest

Tomato Harvest

The picture represents a very small fraction of the total tomato yield.  I have forty plants growing in two beds.  The 20 different types I grow our mostly heirloom varieties and a lot are started from saved seed. One hybrid I have grown for a lot of years is...

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Simple Marinated Cucumbers

Simple Marinated Cucumbers

This has been a great year for cucumbers. We've had rainfalls mostly at the appropriate times so production has been steady. I'll be making refrigerator pickles with a lot of them but marinated slices are an easy and fast fix for dinner. Here goes: 2-4 cucumbers,...

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Bindweed – CobraHead’s Weed of the Year

Bindweed – CobraHead’s Weed of the Year

For our first, and probably last, annual award for the worst weed in the garden, this year goes to bindweed, hands down. Weed of the year requirements are simple.  What weed is causing me the most grief or the most work to control in the garden?  This year bindweed is...

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Sweet Corn

Sweet Corn

We had an excellent corn harvest.  Unfortunately, raccoons ate about two dozen ears due to my negligence in leaving the garden gate open one night  Nevertheless, we still had a lot of corn to eat and freeze.  We froze 16 bags of corn, each 1.5 cups for a total of just...

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Recipe Favorites Over the Years

Recipe Favorites Over the Years

In honor of our 20th anniversary I thought I'd highlight some of our very favorite recipes from years past.  When I looked at some of the posts I noticed that I still make a lot of them in exactly the same way.  The rest have evolved over the years because I don't...

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Twenty Year Anniversary!

In the summer of 1997 I was working in the garden with an old five-tined cultivating hoe, which I primarily use to shape and work up my open raised beds. One of the tool’s tines came loose and before I put in back in its place, I played with it in the soil.  I was...

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Rhubarb Crisp with Ginger

Rhubarb Crisp with Ginger

I like rhubarb crisps best at the beginning of the season. The stalks are succulent and juicy after all the spring rains. I realize there are a multitude of very good rhubarb recipes from pies to cobblers. (And we've tried a lot of them.) Following is a recipe I've...

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A Tale of Two Invasives

A Tale of Two Invasives

Our property is over half wooded and for the last few years, two invasive plants have really made their presence known.  Dames Rocket (Hesperis matronalis) and Garlic Mustard (Alliaria petiolate) are now well established. It’s interesting that both these plants were...

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Come on Spring!

Come on Spring!

The vernal equinox of March 20th was supposed to mark the beginning of spring. Somebody forgot to let Wisconsin know.  It’s the end of April, and we are just beginning to see weather that in any way lends itself to gardening. Indecent weather and the fact that I...

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Fried Potatoes, Sweet Peppers and Shallots

Fried Potatoes, Sweet Peppers and Shallots

I just used the last four potatoes from our 2021 harvest.  They were starting to sprout but not so much that I couldn't use them.  We also have a few shallots left so one went in the pan along with some frozen sweet pepper strips and a couple of cloves of garlic....

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Tofu Spring Rolls with Peanut Sauce

Tofu Spring Rolls with Peanut Sauce

Where better to learn to make spring rolls than San Antonio in March?  There are all kinds of fresh herbs and vegetables easily accessible at this time of year.  You can put almost anything in the spring roll but it’s the fresh herbs that make them special. I asked my...

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San Antonio Botanical Garden

San Antonio Botanical Garden

Judy and I spent the month of March in San Antonio visiting our son Geoff and his wife Queenie, and enjoying and helping with our new granddaughter, Ophelia.  Since we’re not doing any gardening, we’ll talk about our trip to the San Antonio Botanical Garden. The...

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A Vacation from Gardening

A Vacation from Gardening

January Garden While this may not have been the coldest January we’ve seen, it was still pretty cold. Depending on your gardening attitude, the frigid Wisconsin winter can be good, or not. I rate it very good, and other lazy gardeners are in my camp. There is...

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