by Geoff | Oct 27, 2008 | Gardening
Last month the entire CobraHead family had the opportunity to visit several of the stunning gardens and nurseries of the Portland, Oregon region while attending the annual Garden Writers of America symposium. When I say family I don’t mean it in the figurative sense. In case you don’t know, we are a Mother-Father-Son-Daughter operation My interests tend towards edible and medicinal plants, but the collection of Japanese maples and conifers at Iseli...
by Noel | Oct 19, 2008 | CobraHead, Gardening
Except for the value of the labor you put into making it, compost can cost nothing. I detailed my composting method last December here. Today I cleaned up the compost I had made last fall. I have a nice large pile shown in the picture. I’ll definitely have enough to put more than a couple buckets into each of my beds. I had neglected the pile after I made it last fall, but getting it into shape was quite easy. I had to pull out quack grass, burdock and...
by Noel | Oct 5, 2008 | Gardening
A view of the north beds shows an area untouched by human hands from last year until yesterday. The asparagus on the far left was tended and harvested in the spring, but the three beds to the right were probably not walked through until Anneliese started cleaning out a bed full of tansy and goldenrod. Next to the asparagus, the bed with the t-posts was last year a bed of tomatoes, carrots and greens, Anneliese’s first attempt at growing her own vegetables....
by Noel | Sep 28, 2008 | Gardening, Recipes
This year’s garden has been far from great. I’ve been on the road so many weekends that weeding maintenance has suffered. I didn’t even get a lot of beds planted. The fallow beds were not mulched, so weeds are rampant. I’m playing catch up, but things are starting to look up. Geoff and Anneliese are doing most of the shows we have scheduled for the rest of this year, so I should be able to get the garden cleaned up and covered with leaves...
by Geoff | Sep 10, 2008 | Gardening
Dolichos lablab in front of the makeshift cinderblock wall that I built off my front porch. Now when I sit on the front porch I see this: The view from the front Once the plants were established I gave them no additional water other than the little bit of runoff that they got when I watered the potted plants on the porch. The vines thrived during the 100 degrees for days on end drought that we experienced in Austin this summer. However, unlike the hyacinth beans...
by Noel | Aug 18, 2008 | CobraHead, Events, Gardening
That’s Irene Bender, the event coordinator for the Minnesota Garlic Festival , held last Saturday at the Wright County Fairgrounds in Howard Lake, Minnesota. Nice Hat! The garlic festival is a little show featuring about a dozen small farmers offering over 100 varieties of garlic. Garlic was for sale, but so were other homegrown foods and locally produced goods. Garlic flavored food was in abundance including garlic brats, garlic potatoes, pickled garlic,...
