This Year’s Garden
Every garden year is different. Because I grow a wide variety of fruits and vegetables, I can usually be assured that I’ll get some good harvests of most things, even if occasional failures occur. Thirty-three years of growing in the same area also...
Instant Pot Vegetable Bean Soup
Vegetable bean soup is one of our standby dishes in the fall and winter. I make it every couple of weeks in the Instant Pot. Using the Instant Pot is a very carefree way of making this soup but you can certainly cook it on the stove top. The basics of the...
A Bountiful Cover of Leaves
With a lot of help from Andy, I got my garden beds completely covered with a thick layer of leaves. I do this every year. The effect on the soil is amazing. The leaves suppress weed growth over the winter and continue to be mulch in the paths well into the summer. We...
Instant Pot Hot Pepper Sauce
We had a bountiful harvest of hot peppers so I made a large batch of hot sauce. This year we used an Instant Pot. I'm happy to report it made the task a lot easier. We did the cleaning, cooking and blending outside. Trying this indoors can be suicidal, so...
Heliopsis
My gardening interest is in growing food. While I like flowers and ornamental plants, they are not my hobby. I’m definitely not passionate about growing them, learning their Latin names, or keeping up with the latest introductions. I’ve often said “if you...
Tomato Cobbler with Cheese Biscuit Topping
Tomato Cobbler with Cheese Biscuit Topping One of our favorite summer time treats using cherry tomatoes is tomato cobbler. We use a mixture of all colors of tomatoes - black - orange - red - yellow, but my favorite bite is the Sungold. I did not make up the dish...
Raining in the Garden
The year has brought us a lot more rain than we really need. The good news is that I’ve barely had to water. More good news is that water-loving plants like tomatoes, melons, and zucchini are putting out huge crops. Bad news is the tomatoes are splitting from...
Zucchini Cornmeal Fritters
HOME GARDENING - ONE ZUCCHINI AT A TIME Zucchini Cornmeal Fritters Our zucchini and summer squash plants are thriving. I've been trying to keep them picked when the fruits are small - 8-10 oz. size. When shredded, a smaller zuke yields about 2 cups which...
Golden Oyster Mushrooms
Our four-acre property is more than half wooded. Woods means mushrooms and we are now identifying more and more edibles free for the picking. Almost all oyster mushrooms are edible and these golden oysters proved to be easy to harvest, relatively clean and bug free,...
Want Monarchs? Grow Milkweed.
Monarchs love milkweed. If you grow it, and you’re in the range of their travels, you may get them to lay eggs and hatch caterpillars. I’ve got milkweed in a few areas on the property, and I always let a couple plants survive in the garden growing...
Roasted Asparagus with Mushrooms and Sunflower Seeds
'tis the season for asparagus, asparagus and more asparagus. Even though our 30-year old bed seems to be dwindling we still get our fill for a week or two. When I have more than we care to eat in one day I will cook it in some veggie broth for a few...
Setting Up a Low Tunnel for Veggie Starts
I took advantage of some really warm April days to set up my low hoop tunnel. Several years ago I stopped doing an additional potting off of my seedling starts and instead I’ve been placing the small starts directly in the soil of a bed covered with a low tunnel. I...
Cauliflower and Goat Cheese Quiche with Potato Crust
We're using up the last of our 2018 potato crop. We don't have quite the proper root cellar storage system so this is a good thing. They were starting to sprout which is a bad thing if you want edible potatoes. The potatoes used in the crust were Adirondack Blue and...
About Our CobraHead Long Handle Sizes
When we first designed the CobraHead Long Handle, we wanted to make it as comfortable as possible for people to do their weeding while standing up. For that reason, we offer three different handle sizes. The handle lengths are 48", 54", and 60", but actual tool length...
The National Garden Lady Wellness Tour
CobraHead is pleased to partner with Shawna Coronado during her Garden Lady Wellness Tour! Shawna is moving across the country from Illinois to Arizona, and she's decided to turn her road trip into a speaking tour with 30 stops along the way. Beginning on January 28...
Butternut Squash Green Chile Soup
This last growing season was a good year for butternut squash. At least for us here in southern Wisconsin. Below is one of many tasty ways to use this winter squash. Ingredients: 1 T. olive oil 2 C. chopped onions 1 medium to large butternut squash (5 cups - peeled,...
Black Friday Garlic, Again
I planted garlic yesterday, November 23rd (Black Friday). Coincidently, I did this last year, when the Black Friday temperature was 66 degrees and quite pleasant with the soil warm and soft. This year was a different story. The ground froze early, and like last...
Curried Squash Galette
This past Saturday I cooked up our first butternut squash (of about a baker's dozen harvested this year). This interesting recipe in an issue of Food and Wine Magazine caught my eye and I happened to have all the ingredients on hand. I should clarify that...I had...
Compost 2018
I finished my compost pile yesterday. It snowed last night. The pile is already warmer than its surroundings and it’s only two days old. The internal temperature of the pile when I took this picture was 60oF, outside it was 29. I learned to build these structured...
Hot Sauce
I made almost two pints of hot sauce using three different chili peppers: A standard Cayenne, a pepper we just call 3" Hot, from seeds from a plant my neighbor gave me years ago, and a couple handfuls of little Thai hot peppers. The Thai peppers are the plants that...