The Garden Thread - October, 2025

October 1, 2025 | Diana in WI/Greeneyes in Memoriam

[Diana in Wisconsin]

The MONTHLY Gardening Thread is a gathering of folks that love soil, seeds and plants of all kinds. From complete newbies that are looking to start that first potted plant, to gardeners with some acreage, to Master Gardener level and beyond, we would love to hear from you.

If you have specific question about a plant/problem you are having, please remember to state the Growing Zone where you are located.

This thread is a non-political respite. No matter what, you won’t be flamed, and the only dumb question is the one that isn’t asked.

It is impossible to hijack the Gardening Thread. Planting, Harvest to Table Recipes, Preserving, Good Living - there is no telling where it will go - and that is part of the fun and interest. Jump in and join us! Send a Private Message to Diana in Wisconsin if you'd like to be added to/removed from our New & Improved Ping List.

NOTE: This is a once a MONTH Ping List, but we DO post to the thread all throughout the month. Links to related articles and discussions which might be of interest to Gardeners are welcomed any time.

[MomwithHope]

That looks to be right up my alley. Long ago, I used to joke that my headstone should say Born to make soup. Grandpa, Dad, both Serbian, were soup/stew makers. I grew up eating all eastern European ethnic cooking and I carried on. Always cooked from scratch. Had a lot of stuffed cabbage and I still make it. Dad would put a couple of whole cabbage heads in with his kraut when he was putting it up. When it was done in the spring, the whole soured cabbage leaves were used for stuffed cabbage. When I did it, I also canned the folded leaves in a wide mouth quart jar covered with the brine. So easy to use through the next year. Soup is a meal for sure. I just make small batches now and still freeze a small container or 2 with leftovers. Thanks for posting.

[MomwithHope]

I would go with sweet italian sausage (bulk not links) instead of andouille.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

‘Andouille.”

My Dad was a TERRIBLE cook. I remember after he was retired he and Dee (my BELOVED Step-Mom) took a trip to New Orleans and upon their return he was OBSESSED with Andouille Sausage and he put it in everything. Ugh!

He’d also make this horrible, mushy rice with Chinese Five Spice...and those sausages. Double-Ugh!

Anything Chef John Prudhomme could do, Dad felt he could do better, LOL!

HOWEVER - Chef John opened a seafood restaurant (’New Orleans Chart House’) in Madison and I really enjoyed all the times Dad ‘dragged’ me there to eat. Now THAT was some good food! :)

[TheConservativeParty]

Oh yeah, I forgot about the “Christmas” type cactus I have, they take up space in my house too. 😅 Got 4 or 5 of those. And several jade plants and panda bear succulents....😅

[Diana in Wisconsin]

I have three types of Jade plants, but I don’t know their names. Do you have a good link for identifying them? All three look very different, but ‘Bubba’ is the more common one with the thick branching trunk and tons of small ‘leaves.’ Are they called ‘leaves?’ Pads? I dunno!

The second had rather large ‘leaves’ and the third seems to want to ‘travel’ and drape all over the surface it is sitting on.

They do amazing in my sunny Family Room. I’m going to have to build on if they don’t knock it off!

[Augie]

I built this one with winter weather in mind. The bedding box is double-walled and insulated on the top and sides. I didn’t put insulation underneath - the mice would just shred it anyway. I ran the outer siding panels all the way to the ground in between the foundation blocks to keep the wind from blowing under.

I finished the fascia on the front yesterday evening. I need a little bit more 5/4 board to cap the corners on the other end. After it’s been stained I’m going to screw a stall mat onto the roof.

Howard is like Snoopy - he likes to sleep on top of his house during the daytime - it will be a little safer for him with a non-skid surface up there.

And, like everything else around here, the new doghouse has a name - it’s now known as the Taj ma Howard. lol

[MomwithHope]

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
After all that I won’t be surprised if he graduates to the house for the winter.

[TheConservativeParty]

When I was a kid I had the common larger leaf jade, but a few years ago I bought what seemed to be a miniature jade, but now it does grow at a normal rate and has leaves about 1/2 the size of the common jade.

In 3 years, my tiny jade has made me 4 pots of plants from rooting fallen leaves and cutting back big stems and rooting those...they are like Tribbles! Arg!

[Pollard]

I have a book called Home Sausage Making. It's mostly fresh sausage recipe versions of some you'd find in the store that are loaded with preservatives, MSG etc. I made Bratwurst from it and it was good.

Went shopping today and looked at sausage. All totally non MAHA ingredients except for the fresh sausages in the fresh meat dept. Bratwurst in 5 variations plus bulk pork sausage and one bulk spicy Italian sausage.

As far as what parts and pieces go into a sausage, if it says "pork", well technically any part or piece of a pig is pork. Same with beef and turkey. We just don't see an itemized list for store bought like the old recipes have. It's likely anything and everything going into a huge grinder these days.

I like spicy so the bulk Italian sausage will work for the cabbage soup.

With my new Kimchi kick, I've still been using it on bun sized sausages or hot dogs. They both have nasty ingredients as far as preservatives or MSG and other things like soy this and soy that, sodium this and sodium that.

It's been bothering me. Health benefits of fermented foods vs "the science".

The one time I made sausage/bratwurst, I stuffed the meat into the casing with a tube for the meat grinder. I can regrind some fresh bulk sausage from the store and stuff it into bun diameter casing.

The Home Sausage Making book is an old pdf copy of the 1st edition. I just grabbed a 4th edition hard cover from ebay for $9 and it has an Andouille recipe.

I like spicy and especially do like Cajun spices. They actually had Johnsonville bun sized Andouille at the store but the preservatives and other food science ingredients were through the roof and it had MSG.

Andouille is double smoked, once as a butt roast and again in the sausage form. I'd given up on smoking pork butts because it takes 10-12 hours and I don't like the fatty parts which is more than half of it, hence the reason it's the cut for homemade sausage making. I had thought about separating the muscles to get smaller, faster cooking pieces but then I'm still left with the abundance of fatty pork. Reading recipes from the book this morning, it dawned on me, that's sausage pork.

There's a small muscle in a butt that competition smokers call the money muscle. It's about 2" in diameter and 8-10" long and makes melt in your mouth medallions when sliced. There's another larger muscle that's also tender and can be sliced. All else is chopped across the grain and made into pulled pork.(or sausage)

I have a pork butt and sausage plan.

[MomwithHope]

I think I have that same actual book, big paperback. Made a few different kinds over the years. I just have a manual grinder and stuffer. A few years I made yummy turkey sausage from one of those bargain turkeys in November, stripped the bird and added spices and strips of bacon in the grinder. Also did italian pork sausage. If you are looking for casings a great place is Butcher Packer out of Detroit. Great company. They have all things sausage. Reasonable prices. I still use their smoked sweet paprika, fantastic.
https://www.butcher-packer.com/

I’ve also more than a few capicola out of that money muscle. You would enjoy this video. Their curing bags are what make it possible and easy.

Followed this method just used the smoked sweet paprika. Even bought a meat slicer LEM to slice it thin.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QqYdUtNyN4&t=767s

[MomwithHope]

Actually it was the larger muscle separated. He shows everything on the video.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

“...they are like Tribbles! Arg!”

I had an Aloe Vera that I named ‘Audrey.’ I would take a ‘baby’ from her, dump the rest of her in the compost and before the year was through, I’d have another ‘Audrey’ the same size as her Monster Mother!

Lather. Rinse. Repeat. ;)

[Diana in Wisconsin]

“I have a pork butt and sausage plan.”

I’m convinced that that’s all we can hope for in this world, LOL!

[TheConservativeParty]

I have a spider plant like that.....I saved one little rooted “spider” from the stock my folks had before they retired. When that plant got too big, I took another little one from it and pitched the original.
The other day, I cut back a jade plant and ruthlessly pitched the cut off stems into the woods. LOL. I cannot keep propagating them.
I need to find homes for my extra houseplants. No one wants them so far.

[Pete from Shawnee Mission]

Howard's home. Some rolled roofing on the top.
Strips of clear plastic hanging down in the front allow access and light but block some of the wind. (My dad did this in our dogs house!)

[Pollard]

I like a pulled pork sandwich but not enough to eat a whole roast's worth of them. If I can use more than half a $2/lb butt to make sausage, that'll work. It was depressing looking at cuts of meat that are $20.99/lb yesterday. Ribeye/T-bone.

A tri-tip can be worked into the plan too. For $7-8/lb, you can get a few decent steaks out of the fat end that rival $13-14/lb NY Strip. The skinny end is tough but such a small amount that it could be added to the fatty part of a butt for sausage and it wouldn't even be noticeable.

---

New 376 pg edition on left and old 106 pg edition on right. Additional pages in new edition could be a lot of color pics, general info and spacious layouts.

I enjoyed making the bratwurst. I need to do more sausage making. Very blue collar food prep with all that grinding and assembling.

Only casing I saw at the store yesterday was 2 1/2" mahogany made for summer sausage or since it's almost hunting season, venison summer sausage.

Competition BBQ Pulled Pork; queued up to removing and slicing the money muscle. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKr8aYhpmz0

Bearded Butchers. Bone-in vs boneless smoked pork butts starting with cutting them away from two halves a hog. A butcher makes cutting the blade bone out look easy and with one more cut, would make two halves. They fold it back up and net it for the bone-in vs boned comparison. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7pH2J7lj5o

10-12 hours and having to check the fire every 15 minutes makes for a long day. If I can get the smoke time down to 6-8 hours, I can live with that.

Aside from the frenched rack of lamb, Aldi also has butt roasts for $1.79/lb right now so I might grab one.

Most pork sausage recipes use raw pork butt so it's only andouille that needs pre-smoking. All the basic smoked sausage is smoked for two hours after assembly. Same time as salmon so I can definitely live with that.

Aldi doesn't open until 9 am? Guess I'll leave here about 7:30 and hit walmart first.

Hmmm, looks like walmart has hog casings. Minimum diameter when stuffed 35 mm -- Maximum diameter when stuffed 20 mm. Me thinks they have that backwards. An inch is 25.4 mm so we'll just call them 1 to 1 1/4 inch casings. LOL - Mossy Oak with a few reviews that say they tear easy. One guy stopped the process and went to Academy to get LEM casings.

butcher-packer.com - I still use their smoked sweet paprika, fantastic

They have a LOT of stuff including Victorinox knives which I was just looking at on ebay - bookmarked. "Any unused hog casing can be resalted and stored under refrigeration for over 1 year." -- Checks fridge; I still have some from the bratwurst, 6-7 years ago(that's over 1 year). Packed in salt, might still be good but I'll grab some from walmart anyway.

[Qiviut]

Both of my grandfathers butchered hogs & made their own sausage.

My paternal grandfather passed away when I was 7 & I do not remember eating any of his sausage although I have been told it was really good. My Aunt Louise had to clean the intestines for casings ... she would be down by the creek cleaning & cleaning. Dad got the job of shooting each of the hogs when it was their time for processing. They ate a lot of pork - cows were a ‘cash crop’ & they butchered maybe one a year.

My maternal grandfather was German. I DO remember eating his sausage & it was excellent. I even liked his bloodwurst. He was a ‘city boy’ in Germany, but as a widower with a 2 yo son here in the states, married a farm girl (arranged marriage) whose dad had died in an auto accident & a man was needed to run the farm. It was on the job farmer training. I’m sure he had help from Granny & the neighbors when it was hog butchering time, but he certainly got the sausage part figured out!

Anyone who has not had the opportunity to eat homemade sausage (most people in this day & age) are really missing out on a culinary experience - there’s nothing like homemade. The store ‘stuff’ isn’t even close. I have started using plain ground pork (from a hog I bought from a niece & had processed) & adding my own sausage seasoning. It turns out pretty good, but I wish I had recipes from my grandfathers.

[Pollard]

Butcher-Packer has Dexter Russel USA made knives in sale 20-40% off. - https://www.butcher-packer.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=17_250

USA alternative to Victorinox Swiss made.

[MomwithHope]

Love your sausage sharing!

[Diana in Wisconsin]

Not sausage-related, but I was able to save that batch of Jalapeno Pepper Jelly. Yay!

It needed a little more sugar, a little more pectin and I pretended I was making Holy Water and I 'boiled the h#ll out of it,' LOL!

All but one jar sealed on it's own (everything was hot, hot, hot!) so it's self-stable versus having to be in the freezer. Seven half-pints, total. The most gorgeous shade of RED between the red Jalapenos and the sweet Red Bell Peppers.

We had a 'sample' with cream cheese and crackers and it doesn't get any better than that! Thanks for the inspiration and the help in fixing my fail. :)

Artist's Rendering: