Scalloped Potatoes with a Sweet Potato Twist
Since we're still in the resurgence year of Julia Child I thought I'd wind up the year with one of my many versions of her recipe for Gratin Dauphinois or Scalloped Potatoes with Milk, Cheese, and a Pinch of Garlic. I say many because I hadn't opened the book in years...
Color Your Table Green
Brighten your holiday table with the 'other' green vegetable – greens of all colors. The greens I've enjoyed the most recently are the seared collard greens at the Eldorado Grill in Madison, Wisconsin. Admittedly I haven't eaten collards too many times, they just...
I Got Them Crying Over My Horseradish Blues
Two years ago I threw the remains of a horseradish thinning into the compost pile. It rooted, as horseradish likes to do, and I let most of it grow. I've always grown horseradish in my regular garden beds, keeping it at one end of the herbs. After this weekend's...
Fall Gardening in Austin
After a record hot summer with virtually no rain, this has been a most perfect fall for gardening. Right now I am enjoying sugar snap peas, cilantro, Japanese mustard greens, pole beans and radishes. Broccoli, broccoli raab and tatsoi will be in full production soon....
Savory Sweet Potato Quesadillas
I love it when the larder is full of sweet potatoes! We harvested 76 pounds this year. Not bad for 20 home started plants in a Wisconsin garden. There is nothing like a plain baked or roasted sweet potato slathered in butter. The other night I roasted small chunks of...
Satsuma Delights
In late October I harvested my first crop of Satsumas. I planted a "Dwarf Owari" Satsuma in the early spring of 2008 in the front yard of my east Austin home. That year it produced a few jasmine scented flowers, but no fruit. This year it flowered in late March and...
Fast Fruit Auflauf Breakfast
In the last year or so, ever since Anneliese came across an article in "grist.org" by Kurt Michael Friese called 'Simple cooking can produce delicious results - like old-fashioned Austrian pancakes' - see recipe here: Auflauf (like a crepe) has become a breakfast...
Working Worms
I've explained my composting process previously, but I wanted to show a picture of an army of red worms working the sludge mass in a 55 gallon drum that we use to collect kitchen scraps. Boss Cat supervised as I tipped over and emptied the drum. The worms were thick...
From These Ashes a Garden Will Flourish
It was a perfect night for burning the brush pile. Thursday's heavy rains had diminished to a very light drizzle. The pile is a collection of trimmings and fallen branches. This year we had two huge sections of trunk from an old apple tree that I took down in the...
Using the CobraHead Long Handle Effectively
We began developing a long-handled CobraHead soon after we introduced our original CobraHead Weeder and Cultivator. It quite honestly was a reaction to older gardeners who at trade shows kept telling us, "that looks great, but I need it on a long handle." When we got...
A Score of Gorgeous Caps
The cold weather that was delivered with five inches of rain last week dealt me this beautiful flush. The shiitake in my hand is neither the largest nor the smallest. It is one of twenty close to perfect mushrooms I sliced off the plugged logs this afternoon. I have a...
Writing About Writers
We attended the Garden Writers Association 61st Annual Symposium in Raleigh , North Carolina, last week. It was CobraHead's 6th GWA, and our fifth as an exhibitor. Here's Anneliese putting the final touches on our booth. The symposium includes a trade show, seminars,...
One Sweet Potato, Two Sweet Potato
I've dug two sweet potato plants out early, well ahead of the first frost, which is when they will all need to be removed from the ground. The plant on the left yielded over four pounds of usable tuber. We've already eaten one tuber that weighed a little over a pound....
Bloom Day! Or: How I Learned What’s Growing in My Garden
About a week and a half ago, I bought a house. It's my first house, and I have to admit I'm a bit intimidated by it. Just the idea of home ownership and the responsibility that goes with it is intimidating enough, but on top of that I had to go and buy a "fixer...
Potato Bonanza
The bucket is holding over 28 pounds of Purple Viking and Durango potatoes that I dug yesterday. There are some very large specimens and I'm quite happy with this year's crop. The entire bed yielded about 55 total pounds of spuds including these, some blue fleshed...
Leek and Purple Spud-nik Soup
Lest you think I jest, take a look at the purple pommes de terre next to the skinny leeks below: The garden leeks aren't as fat as I would like yet but they are usable and the potatoes are definitely ready. It's time for leek and potato soup. With all the hype about...
Small Fairs – Lots of Gardeners
We continue to do a lot of trade shows, trying get our tools known by the gardening public. We've found that small shows can be more attractive than large ones, especially if the ratio of hands-on gardeners to the overall attendance is good. Big shows attended by the...
Rasberry Obsttorte – or Potluckin’ with Maryann
Last night we were invited to a potluck. I don't usually bring desserts because I rarely make them at home – and I'm not one that can live on just desserts. Besides, who has time to bake? But how could I not do something with the raspberries that we're lucky enough to...
Hand-to-Hand Combat
Funnel Collector Japanese Beetles On A Grape Leaf Japanese beetles only became a pest in my garden four years ago. When they first appeared their numbers were so overwhelming that I pretty much had no choice but to let them go unchecked. They nearly defoliated my...
Back to Kickapoo
Judy and I returned to the Kickapoo Country Fair in La Farge, Wisconsin for another show Saturday and yesterday. We did our first show there, last year, which you can read about here. The fair is about farming and smaller organic family farms, versus the corporate...