by Noel | Jan 29, 2014 | CobraHead, Gardening
Sweet potatoes store well, but they don’t keep forever. Above are the last of our 2012 harvest. These were dug up 15 months ago. They will still be edible, but we need to use them up as soon as possible. They’ve begun to sprout and that’s a good thing. For the last two years I’ve grown my sweet potatoes using sprouts like this, rather than starting new sprouts on a whole potato. This method is much easier. Vine cuttings would work nearly as well. The sprouts...
by Geoff | Jan 22, 2014 | CobraHead, Gardening
Last weekend, my dad, Noel, visited me in Austin, so I put him to work helping me in the garden. It was mid-January; that meant onion planting time. To start your own onion seedlings indoors, you should do so 8-10 weeks prior to planting. In Austin, that would have meant sowing them in October. Since I hadn’t done that we first went to the Natural Gardener, where I picked up Southern Belle red, Bermuda white, and Texas 1015 yellow seedlings. All three...
by Judy | Jan 20, 2014 | CobraHead, Recipes
As soon as I saw this sweet potato cream cheese pie recipe in the local newspaper a few months back I knew I needed to try it. But I didn’t want to use a traditional flour pie crust. I knew that a nutty pie crust would balance the sweetness of the filling, so I held off on trying the recipe until I found a crust that was all nuts and no flour. A few other changes were made too. Maple syrup was substituted for sugar in the filling and the spices were increased...
by Noel | Jan 18, 2014 | CobraHead, Gardening
This seed storage system is easy and inexpensive. It uses readily available off-the shelf CD storage boxes and zip-lock sandwich bags. It can be expanded as needed. Instructions follow. Prior to starting this system last year, I had my seeds mostly in a file folder box in zip lock bags, but the box was unwieldy, not large enough for all my seeds, and the file folders did not lend themselves to storage of really fat seed packets like corn, or home saved squash...
by Geoff | Jan 6, 2014 | CobraHead, Gardening
I’ve struggled to keep a corner of my garden free of Bermuda grass. The grass rhizomes keep sneaking under the drip irrigation tubes. They infiltrate the garden bed and reduce vegetable production. This year I decided to take that section of the garden bed out of production for the season and put it under a mulch to knock the grass back. I’ve also decided to divide my beds into 4′ x 4′ sections for planting and rotation purposes. Since...
