by Noel | Jul 15, 2011 | CobraHead, Gardening
We harvested garlic, yesterday. The bed was kind of weedy this year and I did not do my usual inter-planting with salad greens. However the garlic was just fine and at the peak time for harvesting. Last year we left it in the ground a little too long and the bulbs did not store as well as usual. This year we think we got it at exactly the right time. We used to grow soft neck garlic and it was quite easy to tell when it was ready to pick. The leaves yellowed...
by Noel | Jun 21, 2011 | CobraHead
Last weekend Anneliese, Judy and I exhibited at the 2011 MREA Energy Fair. I’ve posted about this show in previous years because it is one of our favorites. MREA attracts an audience that is far more in tune with the issues of sustainability than the general population, and many of the attendees are home gardeners. In other words, it’s a friendly audience that will buy our tools. Trade shows where we can sell product can be great for us because we...
by Noel | Jun 20, 2011 | CobraHead, Gardening
We came home late last night from four days on the road after a trade show. It’s the time of the season when we should be picking strawberries twice a day, so we lost a few berries to birds and over ripeness, but we still had a huge amount waiting for us, which I harvested this morning. We’ll be freezing some, turning some into strawberry jam, and enjoying mouthfuls of the rest eaten fresh.
by Noel | May 25, 2011 | Gardening
People go crazy over morel mushrooms. They can sell for $40 a pound. I found a few yesterday in the woods, but over the years I’ve never had a major haul. I didn’t even realize they appeared on the property until about six years ago. One year I found about 25, but I was a couple days late and they were well past their prime and inedible. Judy sautéed up the four I found and we had them with dinner. Morels have an interesting chewy texture, almost...
by Noel | May 17, 2011 | CobraHead, Gardening
The 200 plus strawberry plants in the foreground are in a very temporary home. They are banked, trenched, or heeled in; a process of laying plants in a trench and covering the roots with soil. Here they can reside until they can be relocated. A few of these transplants were retrieved from a four old bed that I dug out last week, but most were dug out from runners in the paths on either side of the center bed in the background. 100 of these plants have already...
