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...
by Judy | Jul 31, 2018 | CobraHead, Recipes
We have been growing our own shiitake mushrooms at the edge of our woods for about the last ten years. While it’s fun to walk outside and harvest them, you do have to pay attention to the weather or you can miss some good eating. The shiitakes fruit best when temperatures are between the fifties to the seventies. They don’t do much in really hot weather. But that doesn’t mean they can’t sneak up on you. If you get a day or two of rain...
by Noel | Jul 31, 2018 | CobraHead, Gardening, Vegetable Growing
Japanese beetles, along with a lot of other other natural disasters, are making the garden a little less fun this year. The beetles have only been in Wisconsin for about a dozen years, and they are loving it here. Their populations seemed to diminish for a few years, but this is the worst infestation I’ve had. They’ve not bothered the sweet corn before, but this year they are destroying some silks. Most years I can keep up with them by just collecting them...
