Sweet Potato Black Bean Avocado Salad with Lime
Since we had a record harvest of sweet potatoes this year I’m trying to make a point to serve sweet potatoes once a week. This salad was an experiment based on a magazine recipe I tried a couple of years ago. The only thing I remembered was that the sweet potatoes...
Cold Frames Ready for Spring
These two cold frames should be in production right now, but as can happen, I never got around to seeding them this September. If I had, we'd be eating salad greens, right now. I've had several plantings with some excellent production out of my one frame: ...
Thai Carrot Salad with Peanuts
We are still pulling carrots directly from the earth. Noel planted beets and carrots in one of his raised beds in August. When cold weather set in, he covered the plants with ag fabric, and put a mini hoop house over the entire bed, covered with clear poly. The...
Marinated Brussels Sprouts
Marinated Brussels Sprouts make a great do-ahead side dish for Thanksgiving dinner or any other meal for that matter. They’re also great for snacking on in between meals. We’re still picking them out of the garden but before it gets too cold and stays that way I’ll...
Advantages of Open Raised Beds
As I work on putting my garden to bed for the winter I'm realizing how much I like working with open raised beds. I've been working with them for nearly thirty years. Soon after starting my Wisconsin garden in 1986, I knew that, for me at least, maintaining a...
Veggie Reuben Open-Faced Sandwich
Here’s a relatively quick lunch that makes use of the sauerkraut that I talked about in a previous post here. It consists of 1 or 2 pieces of your favorite bread, toasted, and spread with your favorite stone ground or Dijon mustard. Top with Swiss cheese – we used...
CobraHead LLC and Green Bay Drop Forge Keep Garden Tool Manufacturing in Wisconsin
We are happy to have had a relationship with Green Bay Drop Forge since the inception of our company. Below we tell more about the challenges and benefits of keeping our manufacturing in Wisconsin. Cambridge, WI – November 2012 -- Bucking the trend of shifting...
Double Covered Hoop Tunnel
Carrots in Hoop TunnelI planted a bed of carrots and beets on August 12th. Here are the carrots, eleven weeks later. They're doing great and we're harvesting some fairly large ones, already. The beets are doing just fine, too. I'm hoping to keep the harvest going...
Reallygoods Live up to Their Name
It’s not often that I feel the need to shout to the world how great a product is, but I’ve wanted to do just that about Reallygoods for quite some time. I first encountered Reallygoods about a year and a half ago when Noel and I were on a road trip through central...
Sauerkraut in a Quart Jar
It’s never too late to learn something new. I’ve always wanted to try making my own sauerkraut or ‘fermented cabbage’ as they say now days. I did try making it in a quart jar a couple of years ago but when I saw a little mold on top I threw it out and never tried...
Year Old Sweet Potatoes for Dinner
Continuing the discussion of sweet potatoes which I started with a post about my harvest a couple days ago, these are the last two sweet potatoes from the 2011 harvest. Sweet potatoes, when stored properly, last a long time. We've frequently kept them well over a...
Best Sweet Potato Harvest Ever!
With frost forecast for later this week and knowing that I would be out of town, I decided to harvest my sweet potatoes. Sweet potatoes cannot tolerate frost, so I did not want to take a chance on losing any of my crop. I had previously put a clear plastic cover over...
Salted Sunflower Seeds
I grew a half dozen Grey Stripe Mammoth sunflowers this year and decided to save some seed for snacks. These monster plants are not the tallest sunflowers one can grow, but they are tall enough, and the mature seed heads are well over a foot across. This seed came...
Ecology Action
Earlier this month Anneliese and I had a chance to visit Ecology Action, in Willits, California. Ecology Action is the research farm of John Jeavons, author of How to Grow More Vegetables than You Ever Thought Possible on Less Land than You Can Imagine. Given that...
News From Southeast Queensland
Presenting the CobraHead Blog's first ever guest post! Barbara Wickes of the ‘The Perennial Poppies Group’ garden club was our first international customer. Somehow she found us on the world wide web soon after we opened for business and we’re happy that she did! ...
Simple Seed Saving
I could have titled this, "Seed Saving for Dummies", but I've never been a fan of the "For Dummies" or "Idiot's Guide" list of titles for how-to manuals. How dare they imply that I may not be too smart? Anyone reading our blog posts is obviously very intelligent and...
Cassius Cauliflower
We'll try to stay lean, but we won't be looking hungry when we cook up this good-sized Cassius Cauliflower I harvested this afternoon. The fall coles are coming in nicely; cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage, and soon Brussels sprouts. Cabbage type crops are great for...
Garden Tomato Salsa
Several years ago I got this salsa recipe from a friend of a friend who worked at the local post office. (Consider this my plug for saving our little post offices – they’re good for more than just mail…) I make it every year, as long as I have tomatoes, onions and...
Growing Microgreens
My friend Ted Skenandore of the Tsyuhehkwa Center has been growing pea and sunflower micro-greens and explained his method to me a few months ago. Now I’ve been growing them for myself as well as with the young people of the Save Our Youth program. These are his...
Ratatouille Hot Dish Casserole Bake, with Potatoes
Can you tell by the title that I grew up in Minnesota? Actually I was given a version of this recipe when I lived in Michigan many years ago so it’s more of a ‘bake’ or ‘casserole’. The original recipe included a double layer of sliced zucchini, onions, tomatoes,...