by Judy | Apr 30, 2008 | Gardening, Recipes
We have been eating our homegrown shiitake mushrooms for about a week now but April 29th was the first day I picked a few spears of asparagus. They weren’t very tall but who can wait to have that first taste?! We’ll soon tire of the asparagus after 3-4 straight weeks of eating it every day but right now that green stuff tastes wonderful. Speaking of green stuff I also harvested the first of the nettles. They seem to be quite prolific next to the...
by Noel | Apr 29, 2008 | Gardening
I’ve been able to maintain my strawberries continuously for the 21 years we’ve had a garden here. My first berries were starts we got from a local lady who no longer lives in the area, Jan Lewein. They are a June bearing variety, but we have no idea of the name. The second batch was from my son Geoff, who got them from his job at Nokomis Gardens in East Troy, Wisconsin. These are Honeyeye, also a June bearer. Both varieties are excellent and...
by Noel | Apr 28, 2008 | CobraHead, Gardening
I usually clean out my asparagus bed in February. I don’t trim back the mature fronds in the fall as a lot of gardeners do, because I read that leaving them to grow until spring gives more energy to the roots, This year, because we didn’t get our typical February warm spell, the job did not get done. We had heavy snow cover until just a few weeks ago, and because of a hectic weekend show schedule, yesterday was my first real day in the garden. It was a...
by Noel | Mar 27, 2008 | Gardening
Sweet potatoes are considered one of the best foods available. They probably contain a better all-around mix of useful nutrition than any other food that one can grow in the garden. Sweet potatoes are associated with Latin America and the southern US, but they are quite easy to grow in Wisconsin and actually have been an important commercial crop here for many years. For northern gardeners, the best results seem to be achieved by growing the potatoes under a mulch...
by Geoff | Mar 27, 2008 | Gardening
As I mentioned in my last post I have a new place in Austin. I am just now starting the vegetable garden. (Yes, late for Austin, but I have been on the road promoting the CobraHead for the last couple of months.) The only photo in this post is the before shot. We have to put a small fence around the yard as our dogs, Zaney and Sweet Pea, are notorious diggers among other things. The dogs’ love of rotten vegetables required me to fence in the compost pile as...
by Geoff | Jan 14, 2008 | Gardening
This morning the lid on the compost bucket in the kitchen would no longer close, so it was time to make the first compost pile at my new home. Unlike my dad, Noel, I prefer to build my compost in layers first with materials high in carbon, then a nitrogen layer, followed by a cap of soil, repeating the process until the pile gets to be three to four feet high. I have to mention here that I learned a large part of what I know about composting from my gardening...
