by Geoff | Aug 15, 2012 | Gardening
My friend Ted Skenandore of the Tsyuhehkwa Center has been growing pea and sunflower micro-greens and explained his method to me a few months ago. Now I’ve been growing them for myself as well as with the young people of the Save Our Youth program. These are his directions. My comments are in parenthesis. Fill a 11″ x 21″ tray with small drainage holes half full of potting soil. (The standard black greenhouse trays that are referred to as 1020...
by Noel | Aug 8, 2012 | CobraHead, Gardening
Judy’s good friend Dorothy Davenport lives in a condo but that doesn’t keep her from growing a lot of her own food. Using pots, containers and hanging baskets, Dorothy grows a lot of different vegetables while keeping everything looking pretty by inter-planting colorful flowers. Dorothy makes excellent use of space as you can see by her use of a porch rail to mount a container of green beans. Large containers yield lots of tomatoes. Decorative and...
by Noel | Aug 6, 2012 | CobraHead, Environmental Issues, Gardening
I’ve done battle with the caterpillars of the small white and yellow cabbage butterflies for as long as I’ve gardened. The most destructive caterpillar, known as the Imported Cabbage Worm, is from a white butterfly native to Europe called the Cabbage White Butterfly (Pieris rapae). These insects have only been in North America since the 1860’s, but they like it a lot on this side of the ocean and are a truly destructive pest. The small green...
by Noel | Aug 5, 2012 | CobraHead, Gardening
I missed one of the largest flushes of mushrooms I’ve ever had by three or four days. I didn’t even think to be checking for them in our summer heat and it was just chance that I looked over in the woods, today, to find these. They are on three year old logs, which is all the more surprising. We’ll see if we can dry a lot of them. I think we can, but many are spent and black. Too bad, the fresh shiitake are one our favorite crops....
by Geoff | Jul 26, 2012 | Gardening
I garden year round in Austin, so there is no point at which I “put the garden to bed”, as is often done in more Northern climates. I never get to start with a clean slate for the next year’s season. At any given time in my garden I’ll have recently planted sections that are often still months away from harvest, sections in peak production, sections that are still producing but well past their peak, and sections that need to be removed. During peak planting...
by Judy | Jul 24, 2012 | CobraHead, Gardening, Recipes
Kohlrabi is one of our favorite crunchy summertime veggies. We like it best when peeled, sliced and sprinkled lightly with salt. It has a mild cabbage flavor with a turnip-like texture. Kohlrabi (Brassica oleracea (gongylodes group)) is best picked when less than tennis ball size because it can tend to get woody or fibrous in the middle. We are trying a new larger variety this year, Kossak, a hybrid from Johnny’s Selected Seeds, that is not supposed to...
