Low Hoop Tunnels for Easier Vegetable Starts
Inexpensive and easy to erect low hoop tunnels can save the home gardener a lot of work in getting seed starts into the garden. For the past several years I’ve nearly eliminated the tedious chores of carting flats of vegetables outdoors and back inside daily to harden...
Sweet Potatoes Planted With Black Plastic Mulch
It’s May 23rd here near Madison, Wisconsin. This morning, I planted 17 sweet potato slips into a raised bed covered with a sheet of black polyethylene. Memorial Day weekend has always been my target planting date for sweet potatoes, and this year I’m right on time. I...
Interplanting Trellised Peas in Open Raised Beds
Open raised beds lend themselves well to home vegetable growing. A trellised pea planting demonstrates their versatility. I try to cover my beds with leaves in the fall. The leaves protect the beds during the hard freeze, slow down weed production, and make it easier...
Vegetarian French Onion Soup
Spring is here and so are the sprouting onions. It's time to clean out the larder or keep a close eye on it. We had a fantastic onion harvest last year and still have lots of onions but they do tend to start growing again when spring hits. The yellow onions keep...
Starting Seeds Indoors – The Ladder to Success
I like to start my own seeds. I rarely buy started vegetables. Starting your own seed saves lots of money and it gives you access to far more variety than you can find by buying plants started by others. And if you have a larger garden, buying plants quickly becomes...
New CobraHead How-To Videos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97AQsXJEUEY Our daughter Anneliese has a good friend, Jason Weiss, who is a professional cinematographer. Jason and I spent a few days in the garden last summer shooting CobraHead tools in action. Jason then edited the videos and...
Starting Onions Indoors
Here are three flats of onions I planted on February 8th, 9 days ago. Most of the nearly 1,600 seeds are sprouting nicely in flats in the basement. The flats are on a heat mat and lit with various LED grow lights we have accumulated over the last few years. The onions...
Mashed Potato Salmon Pie
Last week I wanted a "stick to your ribs" meal for dinner. I had potatoes and salmon on the brain so I went searching on the internet for a recipe with those ingredients. I found a salmon and potato casserole recipe that looked interesting, so I gave it a try. While...
Mexico City Living Walls
Last week I was in Mexico City visiting family and saw an abundance of new living walls. Here are some photos of two of them.
CobraHead Garden Review 2014
The garden is put to bed. I was diligent about dragging in leaves to cover most of the beds with a thick protective layer. Last year snows and cold weather came before I was ready and the leaf covering ritual was interrupted. That caused me much more work this season...
Potato Rösti Stuffed with Fontina Cheese, Onions and Mushrooms
Potato Rösti was on the dinner table last night. We had this dish for the first time almost 30 years ago right after we moved to Wisconsin. Noel’s Swiss boss took us to the New Glarus Hotel Restaurant in the village of New Glarus, WI – Wisconsin’s Little Switzerland....
Garlicky Rose Finn Potatoes
We love garlic. Noel plants over 100 cloves each year so we have lots of garlic to use all year. I don’t think a day goes by that we don’t eat some form of garlic and/or onions. I got the idea for this recipe from making a vinaigrette, which starts with a smashed...
Garlic Planting in Fall in Wisconsin
I try to plant garlic in late October. This year we were a day late and the garlic went into the ground on the first of November. I had previously prepared the bed so all I had to do was soften the soil a little and with a steel rake make three relatively equal ridges...
Volunteer Pea Shoots
I made this pea shoot salad last night which included all garden pickings – pea shoots plus baby carrots, baby beets, cilantro, red onion and several varieties of cherry tomatoes. The first time I knowingly ate pea shoots was this past summer. We were on a road trip...
Raspberries Galore
It’s raspberry heaven around here. Our ever bearing raspberries have stepped up to the plate, so to speak. They have been enjoying the fantastically wonderful fall weather almost as much as we have. Our warm days here in Wisconsin are quickly coming to a close but...
Tomato Trellis Performs Well
Early in July I posted about a heavy duty tomato trellis I constructed with T Posts and bamboo stakes: T Post and Bamboo Tomato Trellis. I’m happy to report the trellis performed exceptionally well. I’m going to build one again, next year and I already know some...
Tomatillos – Growing and Cooking
This has been a good year for tomatillos (Physalis ixocarpa). Our three plants have produced way more than we need for our few batches of salsa. Tomatillos are also not that easy to give away because a lot of people don’t know what they are, much less what to do with...
Roasted Tomato Zucchini Sauce
We’re having an excellent harvest this year. Of course, this is due to Noel’s diligence in the garden. With the abundance of tomatoes, zucchini, onions and garlic I’m trying something new – at least for us. I filled a roasting pan with chunks of washed and cored,...
Fresh Garden Salsa
Judy made this season's first salsa yesterday. It’s about as local as you can get. Everything in it is from the garden except the lime. Here’s the recipe: 2 cups chopped cherry tomatoes – red, yellow, orange – most any tomato will work, but the cherry tomatoes,...
Summer Veggie Harvest
We spent an extra long weekend in Pittsburgh for the Garden Writers’ Conference, touring public and private gardens, learning what garden writers learn when they go to school, and connecting with old friends and making new ones. When we came back last Tuesday the...