by Noel | Oct 21, 2011 | CobraHead, Gardening
We’ve been harvesting salad greens from the cold frame I built earlier this year. I talk about the building of the cold frame here. I seeded the frame about a month ago with a mix of mustard, spinach, arugula, several Asian greens and some lettuces. As the picture shows, germination was excellent. Until now, when we are finally getting some very cool nights, the main issue has been to remember to open up the glass lid totally during the day. The daytime...
by Noel | Oct 16, 2011 | CobraHead, Environmental Issues
Turkey vultures are extremely common in Wisconsin, but it’s rare to see them flying directly overhead in my yard. Our wooded property is the main residence of an extended family of crows that controls the neighborhood skies. The crows never allow vultures, owls, hawks or other larger birds to secure the local airspace or even intrude into it for very long. This afternoon there must have been a major road kill on US Highway 18 which is the north border of...
by Noel | Oct 15, 2011 | CobraHead, Gardening
With several nights of frost predicted for this coming week, it was time to harvest the sweet potatoes. They will not tolerate frost. Here’s the bed of potatoes, thick with foliage. The plants are grown through a cover of black plastic which heats the bed up quickly in the spring and pretty much eliminates any weeds. Harvesting is much easier if all the foliage is cut away and removed first. This is the second year I used this sheet of plastic and it...
by Noel | Sep 15, 2011 | CobraHead, Gardening
Yesterday, the Weather Service forecast a hard freeze for Cambridge. The weather people always try to err on the worst case side of things, but you never know, so Judy and I covered everything we could with plastic or ag fabric. We managed to cover the tomatoes, the peppers, the squash, the sweet potatoes, the basil and remaining cukes, and some of the beans. While hardly an architectural masterpiece, form follows function, and Louis Sullivan would have to give...
by Noel | Sep 11, 2011 | CobraHead
With Anneliese and Geoff off to California this week to represent CobraHead at the National Heirloom Exposition in Santa Rosa, it seems a little odd to be posting about a hybrid tomato. However, I grow hybrids frequently. Hybridizing has been around a long, long time and is something that can be accomplished by nearly anyone including the home gardener. Hybrid seeds should not be confused with genetically modified seeds. There are qualities that can be...
