Get Higher Yields With The Best Garden Tools For Weeding
Have you ever had garden envy? Garden envy happens when you see how beautiful someone else’s garden looks in comparison to your own. Or maybe you experience garden envy when you see that someone else’s garden is producing many more beautiful vegetables than your own....
Top 4 Reasons to Use an Ergonomic Garden Tool
Back & Joint Safety Chiropractors suggest the importance of using an ergonomic garden tool, specifically a long handled tool that will allow you to remain upright for garden work. When you can stand up to garden or weed and avoid simultaneous bending and twisting, you...
Garlic Flags in the Straw
It looks as though about all of the 100 plus cloves I planted last October have sprouted and are showing their flags through the protective straw. Garlic flags are a sure sign of spring. I‘m impressed by the strength of the leaves that push up through the wet and...
A Late Start For Onions
I finally got my onion seeds into flats, yesterday. I had purposely held off planting because Judy and I were on the road for nearly two weeks. I didn’t want to enlist anyone to look after my newly sprouted seedlings. I normally target late January or early February...
Garlic Roasted Brussels Sprouts
We still have Brussels sprouts growing in the garden. They can tolerate light freezes and even colder temperatures if covered with straw or leaves - which we have done. Most years I pick the sprouts before it gets super cold, then blanch and freeze them. This year the...
2015 Garden Review
The 2015 CobraHead Home Garden was a great success. The garden is never the same from year to year. Weather, seed and plant inputs, labor, luck, and a lot of other variables make each garden season a new experience. That’s an advantage for home gardeners. They don’t...
Straw Bale Potato Storage
We had a huge potato harvest as the result of growing three beds rather than two and using seed potatoes from Wood Prairie Farm that gave us a much greater yield than previous seed sources. We ended up with over 300 pounds of potatoes from a 30 pound planting. I knew...
Roasted Butternut Squash Medallions with Sage Garnish
You may have read about our harvest of smaller squash in a previous post by Noel. The trellised squash yielded about 35 winter squash. We hadn't even started counting the large varieties which included a 37 pound Boston Marrow, four Hubbards, several Red Kuris, large...
Fermented Cabbage the Kraut Source Way
Above is a picture of the purple sauerkraut I started a couple of days ago with cabbage, ginger, dill and hot pepper. We had about ten cabbages of four different varieties in this year's garden. Since we don't have a great way to store them fresh for any length of...
Garlic Planting in Open Raised Beds
Our target for planting garlic is the end of October. We hit it this year and I'm always happier when the cloves are set for their winter sprouting. Yesterday, I planted 76 saved seeds and added 38 new seeds, Lorz Italian, a softneck variety we purchased last week...
2015 Sweet Potato Harvest
As the garden season winds down, we're happy to report that we've had another great sweet potato harvest. I like to remind people that it's easy to grow sweet potatoes even up north, here in Wisconsin. Here are the potato vines, about two weeks ago. We already had a...
Trellised Squash Harvest
We harvested about 40 small winter squash yesterday. They were trellised using T-posts and concrete reinforcing grid. The trellis is discussed here. The advantage of trellising is space saving. These squash only took up about 60 square feet of garden space, grown in...
Eggplants Bounce Back
Here are three beautiful eggplants. We’ve already enjoyed some of my favorite eggplant Parmesan and our eggplant harvest is going to be very good. Our eggplants are looking pretty good and giving us some beautiful fruit, but six weeks ago, I really thought the crop...
Grilled Zucchini
Noel outdid himself with the squash plantings in this year's garden. Barring any complications with squash bugs, squash vine borers, and other varmints that come along we should be up to our eyeballs in squash of all kinds. This includes a wide variety of winter...
Onion Harvest
Here are about 300 onions we harvested from one of our 5 feet wide by 20 feet long open raised beds. The red onions are Red Bull, which performed extremely well. The yellow onions are Copra, a reliable storage onion that we've grown for many years. Both are...
T-Post Squash Trellis Follow Up
I posted on June 28th just after I set up a trellis system using concrete reinforcing grids and T-posts. Here is the post. I’m happy to report that the trellis has so far exceeded my expectations. The plants have climbed well over the top of the 7 foot high trellis....
Melon and Squash Trellises Using T-Post and Metal Concrete Reinforcing Grid
I planted smaller squash and melons without a firm idea on how I was going to trellis them. Going online, I found several references to using metal concrete reinforcing grids as trellis material. I knew immediately this was a good solution that would easily...
Hilling Potatoes in Open Raised Beds
Most years I grow 2 beds of potatoes. This year, as part of my way bigger than needed garden, I’m growing three beds. They’re planted more intensively than I’d like. That’s because I got carried away with my seed potato purchase from Wood Prairie Farm, an organic...
Snow Pea Mushroom Tofu Stir Fry
Pea pods or snow peas are in - just in time to take over the green aspect in the kitchen from the dwindling asparagus patch. The young and tender pods are great eaten right off the vine. They're good raw and also make a crunchy addition to a stir fry as long as you...
Improved Tomato Trellis
Last year I bought a bundle of 7’ bamboo stakes specifically to build a reliable tomato trellis. I built a beefy structure that performed well, but it had drawbacks. Here is last year’s trellis post. This year I’ve simplified the design. I eliminated the...