by Noel | Nov 24, 2018 | CobraHead, Garden Tools, Gardening, Vegetable Growing
I planted garlic yesterday, November 23rd (Black Friday). Coincidently, I did this last year, when the Black Friday temperature was 66 degrees and quite pleasant with the soil warm and soft. This year was a different story. The ground froze early, and like last year, I was left waiting for a warm spell. That warming almost always happens in either late November or early December but this year it didn’t happen yet and the forecasts looked bleak. I was faced...
by Judy | Nov 19, 2018 | CobraHead, Recipes
This past Saturday I cooked up our first butternut squash (of about a baker’s dozen harvested this year). This interesting recipe in an issue of Food and Wine Magazine caught my eye and I happened to have all the ingredients on hand. I should clarify that…I had butternut squash but not the kabocha as the recipe also called for. Anyway, I made it with all butternut squash instead of the mix and used the Jarlsberg Swiss cheese that I had on hand. One...
by Noel | Nov 9, 2018 | CobraHead, Gardening
I finished my compost pile yesterday. It snowed last night. The pile is already warmer than its surroundings and it’s only two days old. The internal temperature of the pile when I took this picture was 60oF, outside it was 29. I learned to build these structured piles from my son Geoff who years ago was a horticultural apprentice on a biodynamic farm. Geoff taught me a lot of practices used by excellent growers who approached gardening using sustainable...
by Noel | Oct 23, 2018 | CobraHead, Gardening, Recipes
I made almost two pints of hot sauce using three different chili peppers: A standard Cayenne, a pepper we just call 3″ Hot, from seeds from a plant my neighbor gave me years ago, and a couple handfuls of little Thai hot peppers. The Thai peppers are the plants that look like a little Christmas tree, loaded with tiny extremely hot peppers. Normally I wouldn’t use these little peppers, and I won’t again. They are just too small to be worth the trouble. But...
by Noel | Oct 17, 2018 | CobraHead, Gardening, Vegetable Growing
We had a great watermelon harvest. This is the last of over a dozen fruits we picked. Among the varieties we grew were Crimson Sweet, Alibaba, Moon and Stars, and Orangeglo. Most were quite a bit larger than this one. Of course, they all ripened at nearly the same time, so we have been gorging on melons for the last several weeks. This one turned out to be close to perfect inside and exceptionally sweet. I’m getting better at judging ripeness, but I still made...
by Judy | Aug 29, 2018 | CobraHead, Recipes
Who doesn’t love a good side of fried potatoes and onions? And who doesn’t feel like they have a leaden belly after eating too much of a good thing? 🙂 This recipe does double duty of using up a garden zucchini while also lightening up that traditional potato dish a little bit. Your belly will thank you. You can vary the ingredient proportions pretty significantly, but it’s best if you keep the ratio between 1/3 zucchini to 2/3 potatoes up to...
