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...
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...
Buckeye Bean Pot
Bean Nachos I've tried a lot of bean recipes over the years. I'll keep trying new ones, but I always come back to my favorite. Lately, I've been experimenting with various heirloom beans, such as Buckeye, Santa Maria Pinquito, San Franciscano, and cranberry beans...
2021 Garden
I like to grow food. My partner likes to cook. Those complementary interests lead to great meals. This year we had another good garden and as every year, some crops grew better than others. The advantage of growing a lot of different food is that a singular crop...
Not Quite Ready for Spring
Most years I use the month of November to get my garden ready for the next spring’s planting. Preparation includes removing all the trellising I’ve set up, a thorough weeding of most of the beds, cultivating and shaping the beds, and covering both my garden plots with...
Repurposed Chili Casserole
Repurposed Chili Casserole a.k.a. Mexicali Bean Bake is a dish I've been making for well over 30 years. I first found the recipe in an old vegetarian cook book. It is now online at cooks.com. I probably made it once or twice following the recipe. Then I realized...
I Love My Gallant Soldier
Bed of Galinsoga Galinsoga (galinsoga parviflora) is often called gallant soldier, and also quickweed, or potato weed, or by many other common names. It’s native to South America and was brought to Europe, where it's now pervasive, in the 1700’'s. Its presence in...
Anderson Japanese Gardens
Back in July, I took a day trip with a friend to see the Anderson Japanese Gardens in Rockford, IL. This serene, 12-acre garden sanctuary consists of lush, manicured landscapes, winding paths, streams, waterfalls, Koi ponds, and Japanese architecture and sculptures....
Garden Tomato Soup
If you have a big garden you're probably still buried in tomatoes. Along with canned salsa, frozen tomatoes, both roasted and stewed, and spaghetti sauce I've been making tomato soup base. We grow a variety of heirloom tomatoes, red, yellow, purple, orange and...
Caramelized Summer Squash with Garlic
Caramelized Squash It's definitely the year of yellow summer squash and zucchini, for us anyway. We've been pretty good about keeping them picked when smaller but they do get away from us. No baseball bats, yet! The yellow squash don't seem to grow...
All Pole Beans, All the Time
After years of growing half a bed of pole beans and half a bed of bush beans, I’ve given up on bush beans and I’m not going to plant them anymore. This bed was planted about July 16th. It was previously a bed of garlic inter-planted with lettuce. I’ve had...
Rhubarb Raspberry Cobbler with Cardamom
I don't make a lot of desserts but we have rhubarb and raspberries. We usually eat the raspberries fresh but we're not into chewing on raw rhubarb, though I remember doing it as a kid. So a cobbler came to mind and I turned to my 50 year old trusty Better...
Storm Flattened Corn
On July 14th a thunderstorm flattened our two beds of sweet corn. It was déjà vu all over again. I wrote this post in July of 2009: https://blog.cobrahead.com/2009/07/11/corn-corrals/ I usually prepare for events like this by corralling my corn ahead...
Deer Fence
I used to fence the garden regularly, but for the past several years I tried to get away from doing it. I had purchased some electric deer repellers, but they were only moderately effective. Deer Damage This year I decided to go back to my old fence setup. ...
PESTO TIME
The basil and parsley are growing quite nicely this year. It's not tall yet but there are numerous plants with big leaves in our garden so I had plenty to harvest for a batch of pesto. The 'traditional' pesto is made with basil and pine nuts. But there are...
May Planting Time
May is the month of plants and my busiest month in the garden. I have beds to prepare for seeding and planting, and I’m trying to get as many live plants and seeds into the ground as I can. Like every year, I’m way behind where I would like to be at this time, but I...
Rhubarb Ginger Pie
The rhubarb plants are big and strong this year. I have already made our favorite rhubarb crisp, but this time Noel wanted a pie. I don't usually bother with pies because they're too fussy, though I suppose if I bought the crust it would be a lot...
Sweet Potato Black Bean Avocado Salad with Lime
Sweet Potato Black Bean Salad After looking at Noel's beautiful sweet potato starts for this season I thought I'd better see what we have left from last year's harvest. After setting aside the two biggest sweets for next year's sprouts we still have about 10 lbs left...
Off to a Good Start
Sweet Potato Starts Last month I wrote about a failure of my own making with some onion starts. This month the news is much better. I have a healthy and happy box of sweet potato starts that should be large and strong when it comes time to put them in the ground at...
“Fried” Onions
I’m usually pretty good with my seed starting. I’ve got a light and heat setup that I’ve been modifying over the years and I almost always get good starts from my seeds, especially onions. This year I messed up. I had two flats of yellow onions under a grow light...