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.

[Qiviut]

Woo hoo! Glad the ‘remake’ worked!

Can’t remember if I shared this with you, but here’s a great way to use the pepper jelly as an appetizer:

https://bestappetizers.com/cream-cheese-pepper-jelly-phyllo-cups/

From link:
“I have always loved the classic and always-popular red pepper jelly poured over a cream cheese block appetizer served up with crackers! Albeit delicious, that method of serving this pepper jelly and cream cheese combo is not quite as conducive to mixing and mingling as these bite size phyllo cup version! These are party READY!”

[Qiviut]

To stay with this morning’s ‘sausage theme’ ... sausage phyllo cups!! Looks great to me!

https://bestappetizers.com/sausage-phyllo-cups/

[Qiviut]

Back to gardening:

Frost advisory for tonight.

I will cover the dahlias, but the zinnias are in an area too large to cover. I cut all the good blooms (more than I thought!) and brought them in. They are currently in a flower food solution & I will probably take them to my hospitalized cousin tomorrow. She loved the dahlias I took Tuesday.

The red jalapeños have been picked, washed, dried & are on a cookie tray in the freezer. Once frozen, I will vacuum seal them. They should be good for a batch of poppers.

The chainsaw needs a good cleaning so I can start working on whittling down the stumps on the trees I took down earlier - my afternoon project. Mom is getting restless .... wanted an axe to start chopping on the stumps herself .... NOT happening! She also wants the mailbox moved to our side of the street, the leaves chopped up, the railings installed at the top of the steps, the ceiling leak repaired, the prayer shawl I am knitting for her friend finished, & a bunch of other stuff done that I can’t remember right now. 😵‍💫

[Pollard]

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

That bratwurst I made tasted nothing like the overly salty/greasy things from the store. I also know what went into it. Hunks of pork, beef and spices. Recipe calls for veal but naturally, that's not available around here.

I grabbed a head of red cabbage for soup. I know; changing the main ingredient already. Those regular green cabbage heads are just so huge. Guess I'll go with green or orange bell peppers instead of red to still have contrasting colors. Good thing soup is forgiving.

Got some sausage casings and a butt roast and re-upped on all those spices that I hardly ever use for anything else. I recently tossed my old spices in the little plastic containers because I doubt they had much punch left. Some were 6-7 years old.

The andouille is as much, if not more, for eating in a bun with Kimchi and brown mustard as toppings. Grocery store near work has fresh bulk Italian sausage that I can use in the soup.

Guess I'll bone that butt roast and see what it looks like. Might cut 2-4 major muscles apart too. It's 7.28 lbs so 2-3 pieces 2-4 lbs would be about right. That money muscle is hard to find before it's smoked so hopefully I won't cut it in half.

Two hours of smokey fire and once it's got a good bark on it, wrap them in foil and crank up the heat a little. When I get sick of tending the fire, stick them in the oven to finish.

Once it's cooked, it can wait until next Tuesday when I'm off work again and that will give me time to get set up for sausage making. My fridge has zones so aside from the slicable pork, the rest can go in a cold zone where things are known to freeze a little. The Oster Kitchen center needs cleaning as well as the attachments. Meat grinder with sausage tube, veggie chopper. Might have to hunt for some pieces.

[FamiliarFace]

I’ve seen 4 woolly bear caterpillars in the last week or so, and all of them point to something between a mild and moderate winter. I am in the process of bringing plants indoors that I want to hold on to for a few more weeks, anyway. Among them are some lemon verbena starts.

We will be gone for a week so I have to have everything ready for the cat/house sitter. She doesn’t stay here, but she will stop in once a day, take care of the cat (who mostly hides from her), and she will water my plants.

I’ve decided to let the lemon verbena liqueur keep going for another week. I just have too much to do before leaving, and I’m sure it will be fine with another week of infusing.

The water feature is built, but there are a couple more steps before it’s completely finished. He had to make it slightly shorter to get the splash zone right. It will be finished tomorrow or Saturday, but we won’t be here to enjoy it. I’ll have the landscaper turn it off before he’s gone.

I’m moving all the plants that haven’t gotten in the ground to a “watering zone” so that the sitter can reach them easily. Then I will have only one week of planting (I hope) before I put away my shovel for the winter.

I will harvest what I can of the shishito peppers tomorrow morning before we head out. I think I’ll have plenty to share, and I hope my family enjoys them as much as we have.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

Ooo! Love the idea of the phyllo cups. I’m hosting Thanksgiving this year, so I’m tucking that idea away. :)

[MomwithHope]

I have to make a list every few days!

[MomwithHope]

The first part of that capicola youtube shows how to cut that muscle out.

[MomwithHope]

Have a safe and happy trip.

[Qiviut]

I’m doing the jalapeno pepper jelly* phyllo cups for Thanksgiving. There are about 6 people in the family who can’t get enough pepper jelly & they’ll scarf them right up!

*Assuming I ever get my jelly made!

[FamiliarFace]

Thank you! I got all the plants brought in that will be coming in (a few more than I had intended)! My cat sitter has agreed to water everything. She’s a gem! I’ll pay her extra moolah for helping me out like this.

Now to finish packing!

[Pollard]

Thanks. Will have to rewatch again once I have another butt to cut. Right on a corner and is striped. I'll watch the whole video tonight.

Never tried(or seen) capicola. What's it like?

[FamiliarFace]

It’s kinda sorta like ham but not really. Not as salty. Had to ask Mr. FF, as he grew up around delis on Long Island.

I sometimes see it on fancy deli sammiches. 😉

Here’s the wiki about it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capocollo

[MomwithHope]

Cured sliced very thin. You don’t cook it. Great with cheese on a plate, on a sandwich, salad incredible on pizza.Tomorrow I’ll dig up a picture of my last one.

[Pollard]

Thought I could wait on the other two tires but then had a flat day before yesterday. A gravel puncture. Just ordered them. I was going to put them off and buy tunnel materials but I guess that one tire was thinner than I thought. The novelty of living on a gravel road is wearing off.

Search result on perplexity.AI

Took me a while to find the source and learned a trick for using perplexity.ai. Highlighting text in the result pops up a little link for sources just for what's highlighted. -- https://www.billysboudin.com/andouille-sausage-your-guide-to-this-legendary-link/

While most smoked sausages are hog casings stuffed with finely ground meats, Andouille is instead stuffed with a combination of coarse ground pork and chunks of seasoned and smoked pork shoulder. In fact, when one cuts open an Andouille sausage, chunks of pork should be visible within the mix!

So it's a combo of raw coarse ground pork and smoked pork? That means buying more pork. Meanwhile I cannot find a single other source that mentions using pre-smoked pork shoulder. Multiple sources say smoked as sausage at a low heat, 180 and then allowed to cool and rest and then smoked again at a higher temperature.

Neither seems to make a whole lot of sense, especially the second one, and -- what did I get myself into? A mystery it seems. The new edition of Home Sausage Making book with andouille recipe won't be here until Oct 23, next Friday, first day of next work weekend, which means it won't be of any help until the Tuesday after that, the 27th.

I guess tonight I'll pull it out of the fridge and separate the slicing pork, money muscle and capicola cut, and put the rest back in the fridge in the cold spot where things are known to freeze a little. Then see if the recipe in the book uses chunks of pre-smoked pork.

I have a package of bun size andouille I bought a couple of days ago just in case I didn't end up buying a butt roast and smoking it. It's Hillshire and has nearly identical ingredient list as any other store bought pork sausage so I doubt it's very authentic. Pork, water, salt, garlic, onion, spices, sodium nitrite.

Note To Self; It's best to have a recipe on hand before trying to make it. LOL

Tires likely won't be here until next Fri which is also no use until the following Tues. That's normal when I order stuff on Fridays. Will get here on the following Thurs at the earliest while I'm at work.

[Paul R.]

Recipe needed:

A few years ago, my wife brought back home from one of the Filipina get-togethers one of those 13” x 9” x 2” baking trays with Tilapia fillets baked in a sort of “sweet chili sauce” (Asian Style). It also had tomato slices (just some, not overdone) and other veggies in it. I’m hazy on the other veggies - there might have been bean sprouts, sweet pepper slices, and possibly even some type of rice noodles. I may be confusing recipes, but, I’m sure about the sauce and tomato slices.

The dish (I mean, besides wifey, and being married, I shouldn’t comment on the other gals) was REALLY good: The sauce was just slightly spicey, a bit sweet, and I suspect the fish was marinated in the sauce, as it didn’t taste over-fishy at all. I’ll bet you could sub chicken with good results, too, but, Wally World had 2 lb. packs of frozen Tilapia fillets for $7 yesterday, a “Manager’s Special”, so I picked one up, thinking of this dish. It is almost a sort of Tilapia casserole.

I asked wifey to get the recipe, as she said she thought she knew which friend had made the dish, but she never did. (She’s bad about that - sometimes I go with my wife to one of the general get-togethers or parties, or she just brings something back from one, and some dish is really good — so I ask her to get the recipe, and it never happens!)

Has anyone tried making something like this (possibly with some other type of fish) and had it come out good? If so, can you post the recipe?

The Tilapia is about 2/3 thawed, so, this would be great for a Friday supper! :-)

Thanks!

[gnarledmaw]

I dont, sorry.

Im only piping up to say that if its really just a matter of getting rid of the “fishy” smell then you shouldnt have to worry about tilapia as it doesnt have/develop a fish smell.

When it smells it develops the smell of that pail of green algae water full of wrigglers over behind the shed.

Thats easier to cover as its almost vegetal in the first place and not something that your nose has been taught to necessarily associate with spoilage.

Any recipe with an ingredient of a stronger and more forward character should work.

[Paul R.]

In other news, we REALLY have a LOT of buckeye nuts down. I definitely should throw some under some downed leaves so they will naturally germinate / start next spring, then pot them in cut down milk jugs or 2 liter soda bottles with holes in the bottom, and sell some. A guy I know who lives near my Mom’s old place does this with plain ol’ red cedar trees that spring up @ his place, and gets $10 apiece on Facebook Marketplace. A nice Buckeye seedling should be worth at least $15! We have a few Mimosa, oak, and walnut year-old trees coming up too in unwanted spots too - maybe $10 for those?

That reminds me a friend who’s in poor health asked me to mow his place (a last fall mowing) and I spotted a bunch of said red cedar seedlings and some white pine seedlings in his back yard. He doesn’t want them, so, B4 I mow I’m going to nab some for our property: I’ll bet I can sell some of those, too.

One of Mom’s neighbors had a double row of ~ 20 y/o white pines on their south property line when I was a teen: They were left untrimmed with branches down to the ground, and we loved those for hide-and-go-seek, etc.! They eventually grew huge, but got taken out in the 5/8/2009 “Midwest Super Derecho”. :-)

I went back to Wally World 2 days ago and (after again convincing a manager they had to honor the posted price!), I picked up 10 more 1 cu. ft. bags of the garden soil still on clearance for $2, so, I can fill a lot of my impromptu pots!

[Paul R.]

Thanks for the info., but, I was referring to taste, not smell. Tilapia (at least most I’ve purchased at stores) still has some fish taste when pan fried or air fried / baked. Not a LOT - I’d rate bluegill out of decent water slightly less fishy tasting, but, put it this way: For this recipe I need to swing it closer to chicken than tuna — maybe about like trout out of good water, or breaded fried catfish under 5 lbs., out of good water.

Years ago, I had swordfish at a local seafood restaurant, unfortunately now defunct. It was great: Almost like the best pork chop you ever ate, tilted slightly toward chicken. Also unfortunately, Swordfish are also usually very high in mercury. I didn’t eat any kind of predatory fish again for 2 months.

Bluegill are quite low on the food chain ladder (big ones go back to mostly plankton feeding), so those are great too, well prepared, which includes freshly caught on a campsite grill.

:-)

[Paul R.]

I should add, the recipe I was referring to, for the Tilapia, was good because of not only the non-fishy taste, but the other ingredients and esp. the slightly(!) spicy but sweet sauce really “made it”. I’ll bet it had some of this (or very similar) in it, possibly made up home-made:

https://mae-ploy.com/mae-ploy-sweet-chili-sauce/

(This is the best of these type sauces we have found.
It is really, really good on spring rolls, etc. We buy it in 25 oz. (content) bottles.)

Best for taking out fishy taste, that I have found, leaving the fish neutral, and not just covering up the fishy taste, is an overnight marinade in club soda. Milk can work moderately well too. For a “sweet” result, 7-Up works well.