Off to a Good Start
Sweet Potato Starts Last month I wrote about a failure of my own making with some onion starts. This month the news is much better. I have a healthy and happy box of sweet potato starts that should be large and strong when it comes time to put them in the ground at...
“Fried” Onions
I’m usually pretty good with my seed starting. I’ve got a light and heat setup that I’ve been modifying over the years and I almost always get good starts from my seeds, especially onions. This year I messed up. I had two flats of yellow onions under a grow light...
Veggie Fajitas with Seitan
3 T. Olive Oil, divided We were lucky to have a bountiful pepper harvest last year due to Noel's diligence in the garden. Not only did we have more hot peppers than we could use, we had enough sweet peppers to freeze in strips which is what I used in the recipe...
Mushroom and Onion White Pizza
One of my favorite Neapolitan style pizzas is from Pizza Brutta in Madison, WI. I was trying to recreate it from memory. I came up with a delicious pizza but after I looked at the description on their website it turns out we were missing mushroom paste or...
Mushroom Blocks
We’ve foraged a lot of wild mushrooms in our yard over the years, and we’ve also purposely grown shiitake on logs several times, but we’ve never grown mushrooms in the house before. The mushroom is closely related to more familiar Lion’s Mane - Hericium...
Roasted Vegetables with Tofu
Preheat oven to 400 degrees 3 Quart Covered Casserole Dish Ingredients: 1/2 pound firm or super firm tofu 2 T. Tamari 8-10 cups vegetables I used: potatoes - 3-4 cut into 4-6 pieces carrots - 2 cut into 3-4 pieces 4-6 onions - whole if small, or halved or...
Take a peek behind the scenes
Our office downtown You may not realize it, but for much of CobraHead's existence, we ran the entire operation out of Noel and Judy's basement, garage, barn, and, yes, even their dining room. It certainly saved us money on monthly expenses, but it wasn't exactly...
Skillet Cornbread with Blueberries
Alias Grandmom's Cornbread with Value Added Our new favorite cornbread recipe came accidentally. Unless you're one of ten million plus Instagram followers of a certain famous actress you may not have seen it. Sorry to say I am not a follower...
Potato Rösti
In case you missed it the first time I'm republishing my Potato Rosti recipe. This time I used King Harry potatoes from the garden and Gruyere Swiss cheese. When doing a little research on what type of potato to use (I use what I have) apparently a waxy type of...
Lotsa Leaves
I’m ahead of the game! At least for the moment. All my open beds are weeded and shaped up, and I’ve put them to bed for the winter with the thickest leaf covering they have ever enjoyed. I reap huge benefits by covering the garden with leaves. The soil...
Fall Garden Cleanup
Fall Garden Cleanup Putting the garden to bed for the winter requires a little work. If things went perfectly all the beds would get cleaned of weeds and spent plants, compost would get worked in, the beds reworked and reshaped as necessary, and the whole garden...
Galeux d’Eysines Squash
Galeux d'Eysines a.k.a. peanut pumpkin (pronounced Gal-oh d'zeen), is a French heirloom squash. Our seeds came from the Baker Creek Heirloom Seed Company. They are also available from Johnny's Selected Seeds and several other seed companies. Peanut Squash Galeux...
Mushrooms, Mushrooms and More Mushrooms
We have about two acres of woods on our property and each year we seem to find new things. They were probably there all along but went unnoticed by us. Actually this year didn't start out great for mushrooms. The morel harvest was hit and miss mostly due...
Buried Treasure
Potato Bed. Cold and soggy weather deterred gardening for nearly a week. It’s warmer now and drying up, a good time to finish digging up a potato bed that was already mostly harvested. Digging Potatoes. About a third of the bed was left to dig. Harvesting...
Caramelized Onions and Summer Squash
When you have a garden you pretty much have to go with the flow. When the corn is ready you eat corn, after the raccoons have had more than their fair share. When the tomatoes are ready you eat tomato sandwiches every day, make salsa, spaghetti...
Growing Up
This small bed has 5 wire grate trellises. It’s planted with cucumbers, smaller squashes, small melons, and tomatillos. The wire mesh is a concrete reinforcing insert which is readily available and not expensive. Like the T-posts to which they are attached,...
July Garden Tour
Our vegetable garden is divided into south and north areas. The south area is geometric consisting of 18 open raised beds. The North garden is more fragmented and contains a large and no longer maintained asparagus bed, five smaller beds in...
Sesame Blistered Pea Pods
Pea season is just about over for us here in Wisconsin. Pea pods and snow peas are great served raw for snacking or in a salad. They also make a tasty appetizer or side dish when blistered in a cast iron frying pan. Recipe: 1 T. Oil - I use olive oil...
Potato Trenches in Open Raised Beds
I plant my potatoes in trenches which I make with my old five-tined cultivating hoe. I loosen the soil with the cultivator and scoop it out of the trench with a flat spade. Potato Trenches It doesn’t take long to make trenches about eight inches deep and eight...
Hoop Tunnel 2020
I set up a hoop tunnel on April 30th and began moving plants into it the next day. Double Hoop on Tunnel Ends This year, I made the ends double, using two pieces of PVC tubing at each end instead of one. This provided a lot more rigidity to the whole structure...