by Noel | Sep 29, 2009 | CobraHead, Events, Gardening
We attended the Garden Writers Association 61st Annual Symposium in Raleigh , North Carolina, last week. It was CobraHead’s 6th GWA, and our fifth as an exhibitor. Here’s Anneliese putting the final touches on our booth. The symposium includes a trade show, seminars, speakers, tours, dinners, and awards. It is held in a different city every year, and tours of both public and private local gardens are a big part of the trip Pictures from the Sarah P....
by Noel | Sep 18, 2009 | Gardening
I’ve dug two sweet potato plants out early, well ahead of the first frost, which is when they will all need to be removed from the ground. The plant on the left yielded over four pounds of usable tuber. We’ve already eaten one tuber that weighed a little over a pound. The plant on the right will give us just over three pounds. So if our average continues, we could get about seventy pounds of sweet potatoes from 20 plants started in one bed. The...
by Anneliese | Sep 15, 2009 | Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day, Gardening
About a week and a half ago, I bought a house. It’s my first house, and I have to admit I’m a bit intimidated by it. Just the idea of home ownership and the responsibility that goes with it is intimidating enough, but on top of that I had to go and buy a “fixer upper”. The house needs new windows, new wiring, more insulation, an additional bathroom, new paint in every single room, floor refinishing, and a couple of new basement steps. Did I...
by Noel | Sep 5, 2009 | Gardening
The bucket is holding over 28 pounds of Purple Viking and Durango potatoes that I dug yesterday. There are some very large specimens and I’m quite happy with this year’s crop. The entire bed yielded about 55 total pounds of spuds including these, some blue fleshed Adirondack Blue, and a little pinkish fingerling called Rose Finn Apple. I still have most of another bed to harvest, so we’ll be eating a lot of potatoes in the coming months. To...
by Judy | Aug 23, 2009 | Gardening, Recipes
Lest you think I jest, take a look at the purple pommes de terre next to the skinny leeks below: The garden leeks aren’t as fat as I would like yet but they are usable and the potatoes are definitely ready. It’s time for leek and potato soup. With all the hype about “Julie and Julia” by Julie Powell these days (I did read the book) I have to recall that my first attempt at this soup back in the 70’s came from “Mastering the Art...
by Noel | Aug 17, 2009 | CobraHead, Events, Gardening
We continue to do a lot of trade shows, trying get our tools known by the gardening public. We’ve found that small shows can be more attractive than large ones, especially if the ratio of hands-on gardeners to the overall attendance is good. Big shows attended by the general populace are not for us. County fairs, street fairs, and music festivals are now on our “do not even think about it” list. We do well at energy shows that that have an...
