by Noel | Apr 29, 2025 | CobraHead, Gardening, Growing Peas, Vegetable Growing
The peas were planted three weeks ago on April 12th. Spring peas are an important and reliable crop in our garden. I try to plant them early, when the chance of another killer freeze is minimal. I make ten trellises using T-posts and landscape fence. The trellises are windproof. The peas get plenty of sunshine and they are easy to harvest between the rows. This trellis is made with 7 ½ foot T-posts and 3-foot-wide landscape fence cut to five-foot lengths. The...
by Judy | Apr 29, 2025 | CobraHead
Spring is always a fun time of the year after a dreary cold winter. Snowdrops start the season off followed by the crocuses. The blue scilla are everywhere in the lawn and the tulips are budding out. But my favorite part is looking for the edibles such as ramps, spring onions, chives, nettles, baby mustard (self-seeded from last fall), asparagus and whatever else I can find. This year Noel picked the first of our ramps. He started the patch in our woods about...
by Anneliese | Apr 27, 2025 | CobraHead
We’ve posted a lot about vegetable growing here, but in recent years, we’ve added more and more ornamental plants to our growing repertoire. Our latest interest is Dahlias! If you’d like to try them, too, we have a few handy tips, courtesy of our friends at Russells Mills Flower Co. Dahlia Growing Tips: When to plant: Plant after danger of frost and when the soil temp is around 60 degrees. That ranges from mid April to Late May, depending on how...
by Noel | Mar 31, 2025 | CobraHead
About 30 years ago I accidentally left some sweet potatoes in the basement well past their one year maximum shelf life. The potatoes were wrapped in newspaper in a relative dry environment. As I unwrapped the potatoes I found they were dehydrating and all the potatoes had put out sprouts, which, for lack of light, were pale pink or red, but were indeed, totally alive little sweet potato vines, feeding off the mother plant. I realized these sprouts would be easy to...
by Noel | Mar 28, 2025 | CobraHead, Gardening, Vegetable Growing
I’ve grown food for a long time. I learned a lot about home gardening from my mother who gardened because she had to, as we had little money. I also learned a lot from the neighbor next to us who was a vegetable gardener extraordinaire. Mrs. Martin came from her house in inner Detroit almost daily in growing season to garden a quarter acre plot next to our house in Warren, which borders Detroit on its north side. Rose Martin took a bus route that required several...
by Judy | Mar 28, 2025 | #CobraHeadFolksEat Good, #JudyValdes, CobraHead, sweet potato dessert, sweet potato pie
Here it is the end of March and we’re still working our way through our 2024 sweet potato harvest. It’s an amazing root vegetable and a nutritional powerhouse. We have been growing our own starts from saved plants for over 25 years. The variety is Jewel. It’s large, good tasting, with exceptional storage. They can last for up to a year, stored in our heated but cool basement, wrapped in newspaper. I’m always looking for unsweet ways to use them because I’m more of...
