by Noel | Aug 21, 2010 | CobraHead
CobraHead is actively involved in the Mailorder Gardening Association. Anneliese and I attended the MGA summer conference in downtown Chicago this past week. In addition to the seminars, workshops, roundtables, networking and evening fun, we also had an afternoon tour of the Ball Horticultural Company in West Chicago. Ball has been around since 1905 and is the second largest seed distributor in the United States. Ball’s President and CEO, Anna Ball,...
by Noel | Aug 13, 2010 | CobraHead
Judy just posted a few days ago about how she is trying to pick the zucchini before they get oversized and unusable. I’m not going to go too far about her best intentions going awry, but as you can see, I found a couple of lunkers in the summer squash bed, yesterday. You can see a penny on the big one to give you an idea of its size. I can’t fault Judy for not keeping up. The garden is close to impossible to work in, right now. We have had over a...
by Noel | Aug 3, 2010 | Gardening
I commented earlier that this year I cleaned off my compost area and stuck in some squash and melon starts. I didn’t start the seeds until the second week of June, but as you can see from the first picture, the plants are doing quite well. For a while I was worried that I was getting all foliage and no fruit. That is not the case. I counted well over a dozen relatively large squash and pumpkins hiding under the leaves and several are very close to...
by Noel | Jun 27, 2010 | CobraHead, Gardening
As usual, I’m putting too much time on the road and not enough time in the garden. Flower and garden shows and other trade shows on weekends throughout the spring and early summer have kept me from where I’d rather be. I planted a bed of sweet corn on June 7th. That’s a lot later than recommended, but I’ve been much later than that before and still had a fine harvest. I normally plant two beds of different varieties, but this year I was...
by Noel | Jun 14, 2010 | Gardening
As a believer in a purer meaning of organic and sustainable, and opposed to the mistaken path of the corporate food system, I know the insane war on weeds cannot be won with chemical warfare. In fact, if weeds have to be killed, hand-to-hand combat is the only solution. I do not make war on weeds, but integrate their growth into my gardening system. My vegetable garden is a testing ground where I’m constantly confirming that it is logical to use weeds as my...
