Start with a head or bulb of garlic. Find a nice big one. You can get one from a farm stand, Walmart, or anything in between. It doesn’t matter. Find a kind you like and go with it.
Three years ago (May 2014) I found an evergreen sprout very much like this one in my tulip/coneflower garden (this is another one I found the following year but did nothing with).
I couldn’t bear to pitch him, so I put him in a little pot and set it in the vegetable garden on the south side of the house, where it is always nice and warm.
By August, he had grown into a little green puffball. I didn’t think he would survive the harsh Wisconsin winter in his pot, so we found a place in the corner of the yard where he would be safe and aesthetically pleasing to the landscape.
A month later, he had grown even more.
My husband was convinced Sam (my mother-in-law named him) had died over the winter. How wrong he was. He not only lived, he flourished, and by August 2015, Sam was beginning to look like a proper tree.
He even got fat.
I just took this picture today (April 1, 2017). Just over three feet tall! He is always purple/brown this time of year – he’ll turn green in due time.
Red Cedars provide important food and shelter for migratory birds, and the berries, while not as good as some other juniper species, can also be gathered as flavoring for meat and gin and to use in medicine.
I couldn’t find where I originally got this recipe (it was at least 15 years ago, when the internet was still somewhat fresh-faced and lest porny), so I’ll do this one the old fashioned way.
LOADED BAKED POTATO SOUP
12 slices bacon
4 green onions, chopped
2/3 cup butter
1¼ cups shredded cheddar (colby-jack is nice too)
2/3 cup flour
1 cup sour cream
7 cups milk
1 tsp. salt
4 large baked potatoes, peeled and cubed (or just peel and boil some potatoes until just fork-tender)
1 tsp. black pepper
Chop the bacon and place in a large skillet. Cook over medium heat until brown and crisp. Drain and set aside on paper towels.
In a large pot, melt the butter over medium heat. Whisk in flour until smooth. Gradually stir in milk, whisking constantly until thickened. Stir in potatoes and onions. Bring to just a boil, stirring frequently (frequent stirring keeps it from burning).
Reduce heat and simmer 5 minutes. Mix in the bacon (save a little for garnish if desired), cheese, sour cream, salt and pepper. Continue cooking, stirring frequently, until cheese is melted.
Start with a head or bulb of garlic. Find a nice big one. You can get one from a farm stand, Walmart, or anything in between. It doesn’t matter. Find a kind you like and go with it.
Break that sucker apart. Separate as many individual cloves as you will want full bulbs. Again, use big ones. I like multiples of 3 so I can braid them after harvesting.
I live in Wisconsin, which means I need to have my cloves in the ground in fall, after the first frost (you may want to look up the recommendations for your climate, but I believe it needs to be in the ground when it is cold out in order to grow). Yes, that is snow on the ground. I believe this was in November sometime.
Plant your cloves, pointy-side up. That’s where the leaves will sprout, so you want them facing up. 2-3 inches deep; you don’t have to dig a grave.
Mulch over them with whatever yard waste you have. This appears to be what was left of my mums and some dead ornamental grass.
When you uncover them after the last frost, chances are good you’ll already have sprouts. This was maybe May? Could be April, but we got a blizzard this past April, so it probably was May.
Leave your garlic alone until the green parts begin to die off and/or fall over. This is what they looked like when I came back from vacation. I guess there were strong storms when I was gone, which may have been the culprit, but the stems were creased so I knew they were done regardless.
Make sure you dig far enough away so you don’t slice through the bulb with the shovel. I did that last year. :(
Also dig down deep enough to get under the bulb. Lever it out and then gently pull until the roots let go of the soil (I have very clay-heavy soil, so this is sometimes a struggle).
Nine cloves of garlic = nine bulbs of garlic!
Get as much dirt off as you can without actually washing them - you want them to stay dry. Then you can just hang them somewhere cool and dry (I braid them because I am fancy, but you don’t have to), and they’ll keep for a good long time. Since it’s still warm now, I’ve got them in the basement, but once the weather turns cooler I’ll move them to our attached garage.
Et voila! Your own organic garlic! Take care to save a bulb to use for planting in fall, and you will have a never-ending supply of nearly free garlic.
A recipe for our doggo friends, who are pure and good and we do not deserve their love.
This recipe uses normal human ingredients that you may already have in your kitchen. You could probably eat them yourself if you were so inclined. I wouldn’t, but you do you.
This is Lucky. He is a good boy.
1 cup rolled oats
1/3 cup margarine or butter
1 cup boiling water
¾ cup cornmeal
1 Tbs. sugar
2 tsp. chicken or beef flavored instant bouillon (2 cubes)
½ cup milk
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
1 egg, beaten
2-3 cups flour
Preheat oven to 325. In a large bowl, combine oats, margarine, and boiling water (if you use bouillon cubes instead of granules, you might want to put them in the water to dissolve while boiling). Let stand 10 minutes. Stir in cornmeal, sugar, bouillon, milk, cheese and egg and mix well. Add flour 1 cup at a time, mixing well after each addition to form a stiff dough (I wound up using about 2 1/3 cups).
On floured surface, knead in remaining flour until dough is smooth and no longer sticky, about 3 to 4 minutes. Roll out to ½ inch thickness and cut into shapes or just strips with a pizza cutter because dogs don’t care what shape their food is. Place on greased cookie sheets and bake for 35 to 45 minutes or until golden brown. Cool completely. Store in a Ziploc bag in the refrigerator to avoid mold.
I normally do the pizza cutter method but because my sister recently gave me some bone-shaped cookie cutters I thought I’d make the extra effort.
I see some posts that go around that say that Mint is good for bees and I just want to say DO NOT PLANT MINT DIRECTLY IN THE GROUND. Either bury the pot or leave the pot on a porch. Mint is a weed and it will take over your garden, compete with your other plants for food and water, and grow from under concrete and rocks.
I also hear oregano and catnip is like this as well. Feel free to add any more since its garden season for many of us.
Mint takes your garden as yours, and you shall never be able to plant it again. My grandmother planted mint when she was a young housewife and it stayed there until long after she died. We sold the house with mint in the backyard.
This also applies to bamboo, by the way. You plant bamboo and it takes over your house.
Another one in the “Super Easy Dessert” category. It is quite literally graham crackers and pudding. No baking. However, there are 2 disclaimers on this one:
1. You MUST make this at least a day in advance because it needs to sit
2. There is a minor “specialty” ingredient, but it is easily found in the supermarket and you actually could just substitute canned frosting and eliminate the need for it altogether.
Cake:
1 box graham crackers (14.4 oz size) (yes, you will use most of it)
2 boxes French vanilla instant pudding mix (3 oz. size)
1 container whipped topping (like Cool Whip, 8 oz. size)
3 cups milk
Icing:
2 packets Nestle Choco-bake
1 tsp. vanilla
3 Tbs. margarine or butter, softened
3 Tbs. milk
2 tsp. light Karo syrup
1 ½ cup powdered sugar
Line the bottom of a greased 9x13 pan with a single layer of graham crackers. Mix the pudding with the milk and then fold in the cool whip. Pour half of the pudding mixture over the graham crackers. Add another layer of graham crackers on top of the pudding and pour on the rest of the pudding. Top with a final layer of crackers.
For the icing, combine all the ingredients and mix until smooth (it takes a LOT of mixing. Like you will think “this is not going to combine” at one point). Spread over the top of the cake. If you use canned frosting, you may want to microwave it a little to loosen it up so it spreads more easily.
Refrigerate overnight or even longer.
It’s very easy and very tasty (my husband’s favorite) and people are always so impressed by it.
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