Knife Shoppe

Hi ya’all. I haven’t been very active here lately because I had some work to do. Including that after months and months of heavy procrastination, I have finally purchased web hosting and a domain and started a small webpage for my knives.

www.kb-noze.cz

Constructive criticism is welcome.

The webshop interface does not allow me to display prices in other currencies than Czech Crowns (yet), but I do hope that anyone can convert it to USD or € or whatever should they need to. I will gladly sell anywhere in the world as long as it is financially feasible for both me and the customer, but selling outside of the Czech Republic must be done through individual arrangements and cannot be done simply via the webshop interface (not yet). The reasons are simple – additional currencies and shipping outside CZ are both available for an extra charge and I am not ready to dish out more money than is strictly necessary. Not yet, anyway.

I am thinking about adding a knife-making blog there, but I am somewhat discouraged by the amount of work that it would entail.

I will leave this post pinned to the top of the page for some time.

The Greater Gardening of 2026 – Part 48 – Winter Wheat

In a way, this article could count towards next year’s gardening. I have sown wheat on the biggest continuous patch that I have.

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The upper half is sown with spelt, the lower half with durum wheat. Why these two species? Because they are significantly more expensive than ordinary wheat.

I am not 100% sure both are winter varieties; I assume they are, because for both species the winter variety is the rule and the spring variety is the exception. If none survive the winter, they will still serve as cover crops, and I can always sow/plant something else in their stead in the spring.

But growing wheat on this large-ish scale poses a problem, one I also encountered with the naked oats (which I plan to grow next year too) – how to separate the grain from the chaff. I will still have too little to thresh with a flail on the ground, so I wanted to build a bucket with a DIY drill attachment for threshing small amounts. I tested a functional idea with the oats already, and I was all set to build it over winter. However, that might not be necessary anymore, for I had a stroke of luck!

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This is a grain shredder. My father exchanged it for something when I was a kid with an acquaintance at work, who was moving away and therefore did not need it anymore. Then, another neighbor borrowed it to shred grains for cows and chickens, in exchange for allowing my father to mow grass for his rabbits on part of his meadow. And then we all kinda forgot about it.

The neighbor is retired now, and he no longer has either cattle or poultry. And his wife put her foot down – unneeded junk must out, and the grain shredder should be either tossed or returned. We met at the doctor’s when my mother went for her flu shot, and he broached the subject – do I want the shredder back, or should he toss it?

My mind immediately went to using it to thresh the grains I plan to grow next year, and I said I’d gladly take it back.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

The machine is very old. The motor has Azbuka inscriptions, so it might have been built in the USSR. It was certainly built during the time of the Iron Curtain, because we got it during that regime. It possesses a truly mighty induction motor for a domestic utensil. And it also was in possession of a no-longer-used type of wall plug. I had to change it for a modern version (I also added the wheels when I was at it).

The rewiring, although simple in principle, was not painless. The machine was tripping the breaker, so I was suspecting I wired the plug wrongly. Luckily, an old friend was willing to assist me via WhatsApp, and he confirmed that I did wire the machine correctly, so maybe it was tripping the breaker for one of two reasons: 1 – the startup current was too high, or 2 – the residual current was too high due to the machine being too old. I despaired, but since I was assured the wiring was OK, I tried to plug the machine into the Variable Frequency Drive I use to regulate the speed on my belt grinder.

And to my joy, the machine worked. The VFD starts the motor slowly, the machine no longer trips the breaker, and I can regulate the speed from 5% all the way to 100%. I hope it keeps working for some time.

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The principle is simple: inside the drum are two sets of blades: two rotate with the edge, two with the flat, and an outlet is covered with a sieve. Since I can regulate the speed, I can stir the grains relatively gently, as well as bash them to the point of breaking if I want to. For threshing, I will probably remove the sieve completely. And if I somehow manage to grow a lot of grain, I can use a fine sieve to make whole-grain flour too.

This was truly a stroke of luck that does not happen often. I am glad I have honest neighbors.

Cookin’ Potatoes

Bruce requested some recipes, so here they are. First, though, a note:

In Czechia, we commonly have at the very least three types of flour: fine, medium, and coarse. AFAIK, this is not the case in most western countries, including the USA and Canada, where usually the only flour available is the “fine” type. If you try to make these foods with fine flour, it might work, but the results will probably have a slightly different consistency and may require some changes.

Here go the recipes.

Savory potato pancakes

500 g of cooked crushed potatoes
2 cups of medium flour
1 teaspoon of salt
2 spoons of cooking oil

Mix the ingredients into a malleable dough, adding either flour or potatoes for the desired consistency. Roll the dough into a 3 mm thick flat and cut pancakes of the desired shape(s) and size(s). We usually use either a round cookie cutter or we simply cut it into squares with a rolling waved-edge cookie cutter. The pancakes can be either fried in a thin layer of oil or lard (lard is IMO the tastier option), or on a dry non-stick pan and subsequently brushed with oil/butter or another fat of preference.

For added taste, it is possible to add fine-diced ham or tofu directly into the dough.

The pancakes are usually eaten either alone or with salami, sausage, or hot dog, or baked meat of any kind, or with cheese of preference.

Bramborák

This is a different type of savory potato pancake. To my knowledge, a traditional Czech dish.

500 g of raw potatoes
2 dcl of milk
2 teaspoons of salt
2 teaspoons of marjoram (or more, or less, according to taste; oregano and basil are suitable substitutes)
8 garlic cloves
2 cups of medium flour
3 spoons of cooking oil

The potatoes need to be either grated on a fine grater or shredded in a food processor/mixer, then mixed with milk, salt, and crushed garlic. Then slowly and thoroughly mix in the flour and oil to make a thin smoothie-like batter. Try to fry a piece, and if the dough is too runny, add flour; if it is too thick, add milk.

For best results, these pancakes are to be fried in lard. Simply scoop the runny dough with a small ladle and pour it onto a hot frying pan. Once the edges turn golden-brown, flip them and fry the other side.

They are usually eaten with a potato-mushroom soup, turning the soup into a full meal and not just a first course. Like the previous kind, they can also be eaten with baked meats, or cold salami or cheese.

The thin dough can also be poured into a baking tray and baked in the oven into a savoury cake. As a kid, I liked this cake baked with whole hot dogs and quarters of sour apples floating on the surface. It does sound strange, but it works.

Savory potato dumplings

AFAIK, this is also traditional Czech food.

1 kg potatoes
2 eggs
1 teaspoon salt
1 spoon of milk
3 spoons of potato starch or flour
3 spoons of fine semolina
400 g of coarse flour

The potatoes need to be cooked at least a day prior, left to sit overnight in the fridge, and then crushed/grated/mashed. Mix the eggs with milk and salt, and pour into the pile of crushed potatoes mixed with the starch, semolina, and flour. Work thoroughly into a somewhat homogeneous dough (there will always be pieces of potato here and there).

Form the dough into dumplings, cylinders approximately 5 cm in diameter and  10-15 cm long. Cook the dumplings submerged in salty boiling water for circa 20 minutes. After they are scooped out of the water, they should be immediately cut into 1-1,5 cm slices. The best way to cut hot dumplings is with dental floss or another type of strong, thin, flexible thread. To cut the dumpling, the thread is scooped under it to the desired position, then crossed over it and firmly pulled – that results in a clean, straight cut.

These dumplings are most commonly eaten as a side dish with baked meats or poultry, together with either sauerkraut or pickled/steamed/cooked/baked vegetables. My favourite combination is with baked duck and spinach. Sometimes these dumplings are made with a hot dog rolled into the cylinder.

If desired, for the dumplings to absorb fat more readily when eaten with particularly greasy meats, white bread cut into small cubes can be added to the dough.

Fruit potato dumplings

The only sweet dish in this round.

250 g of soft cottage cheese
250 g of crushed boiled potatoes
250 g of medium flour
2 spoons of fine semolina
2 eggs
5 spoons of cooking oil
a pinch of salt
a pinch of baking powder

Whisk the cottage cheese with eggs, oil, salt, and baking powder. Then add flour and semolina while continuing to whisk. At last, add the potatoes until a malleable dough is created.

To create the dumplings, a piece of fruit about the size of a plum should be wrapped in a few mm of dough to make a ball. Usually used fruits are: plums, apricots, peaches, apples, cherries, strawberries, blueberries. You can also use jam or marmalade instead of whole fruit.

Formed dumplings are either cooked for 8 min in salty water or for 15 min in steam. When using water, take extra care to make the dumplings watertight so the fruit or jam doesn’t spill out.

These dumplings are usually eaten as a standalone dish, sprinkled with sweet cocoa powder, powdered sugar, grated hard cottage cheese, and melted butter.

That’s the batch of recipes for now; have fun if you try them.

In all of these recipes, a part of the potatoes can be substituted with pumpkins, squash, or zucchini.

The Greater Gardening of 2026 – Part 47 – Acceptable Agrie

I wanted the title to be “Amazing Agrie”, but alas, the variety fell just short of my standard for that.

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Some plants were still green, but I decided to harvest them all anyways to curtail  the ongoing pest damage. There was less of it than in other varieties, but it was still substantial, and even some tubers in storage have some wireworm holes that I hope won’t lead to too much spoilage before we manage to process them.

As far as tuber size goes, the variety performed extremely well. I did put aside 100 pieces of circa 50 g tubers as eventual seed for next year, but I had trouble finding enough such tubers – most were significantly bigger.  But all show signs of drought stress – some are split, some are bumpy and knobbly, and all are warty and crusty. All these three issues are due to heat and drought. Still, I did get a lot of very big tubers over 500 g, and several over 750 g.

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And the record holder for this year is a tuber mere 20 g shy of a full kilogram. Impressive indeed.

Judging by this variety alone, my intelligence must be abysmal, since the old Czech saying goes, “The dumber the peasant, the bigger the potatoes.” But I personally think that saying is more an expression of folk envy than of folk wisdom.

So why do I not consider them amazing? The overall harvest was just about 80 kg, circa 4 kg per m², so not much more than the other varieties.

As far as cooking goes, all four varieties that I grew this year are extremely tasty in all uses, and all are very well suited for potato pancakes, bramborák, and Czech potato dumplings.

I will write about dehydrating them in a separate post.

The Greater Gardening of 2026 – Part 46 – Some Slight Soybean Success?

You might remember that I hoped to get at least some soybeans, despite the bought seeds’ abysmal germination rate. And it looks like I might have.

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The annual weeds that have overgrown everything died off, but the soybean plants still managed to cling to life. And this week, they started to turn yellow. We might get a frost any day now, so I decided to call it quits and harvest them all. I need to mow all of the garden and prepare the beds for winter anyway, so I cannot wait much longer.

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I put all the harvested pods into a tray, and I am drying them slowly indoors at room temperature. If they behave like other legumes with which I have experience, most of these should fully ripen now and be viable. After they dry, my father will shell them, and I will run a germination rate test. If they fail the test, they should still be good to eat. And if they germinate at a reasonable rate, I will have my own seed for the future. Which would be great. I will tell you the results, when that time comes.

The Greater Gardening of 2026 – Part 45 – Pumpkins & Pattypans

I harvested my summer squash a few weeks ago.

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There are 12 kg of produce in that picture, and only the white pattypan squash are worth speaking of. We converted them mostly into ersatz sauerkraut. One measly zucchini, two small marrows, and a handful of apple-sized green pattypan squash are all I got from the rest. The single yellow pattypan plant made a lot of female flowers, but they were all infertile for some reason, so any fruit that started to develop quickly started to rot.

I had not a single Hokkaido squash. All the plants remained stunted the whole summer, if they survived at all.

Luckily, all that failure was compensated by the butternut squash.

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The plants covered the trellises from top to bottom and produced, on average, almost two fruits per plant.

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I harvested nearly all of them this week. The plants started to die off due to powdery mildew, an inevitable outcome of the way-too-hot summer. I did not do much to try to combat it; it wasn’t necessary, since most of the fruit was at full size already.

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I got 37 squash so far, with a total weight of 56 kg. There are probably still about 4 kg of unripe squash outside, still somewhat growing, so I will probably get to 60 kg total. We already ate some, and we gave some away too, since there is no way we can manage to eat and process all this.

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I got two huge baskets of mushrooms in exchange for four of them, which is nice. I made smaženice from those in the picture (mostly blushers and parasols). The rest were mostly boletes, which I dehydrated. I do not have time to go mushroom picking this year, so this came in handy. Our stockpile of dehydrated mushrooms was starting to dwindle, and this replenished it for at least two years.

Now I will probably have to quickly process some of the remaining butternuts too, because about 50% developed brown spots on the skin. I have no experience with these, and I cannot find reliable information on how they affect their shelf life. Thus, I will probably do my best to freeze, dehydrate, or can all the affected fruits ASAP, with setting one perhaps aside to see how it goes.

Salmon Steak With Butternut Squash

I wasn’t planning to write about this, but when I arranged the final product on my plate, I thought I might want to share it, so I snapped a quick picture with my phone.

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After eating the meal, I obviously decided to share it, since you are reading this. I really enjoyed it; I will definitely cook it again, and I’ll improve it. Here is the recipe:

Squash: Cut the fruit lengthwise, deseed, and peel it. Cut into ca. 12 mm (Ann Halfaninch) slices. Cook until soft on low/medium heat in steam to prevent it from dissolving into mush. This will take about 20 minutes, about the time it takes to make all the rest.

Horseradish paste: Wet dehydrated horseradish powder with freshly squeezed lime juice to make a very thin paste. A teaspoon of horseradish powder is enough for two steaks.

Salmon Steak: Salt both sides, wait a bit for it to release juice, then sprinkle both sides with equal amounts of crushed Basil, Rosemary, and Oregano, as much as can stick to the surface. Heat olive oil in a pan to ~180°C (356 Freedummheit), sear on both sides, then lower heat to medium/low and slowly fry both sides until cooked through, without overtly charring the outside. A lot of the spices will fall off; that is why an excess was added at the beginning. Once the steak is done, put it on a warm plate, skin-down, and spread the horseradish paste on the surface while it is still hot.

Sauce: Finely cut small red onions and brown them in hot olive oil. Add a few cut cherry tomatoes, salt, about a spoon of soy sauce, and a sprinkle of white pepper, and stir on medium heat until the tomatoes dissolve. Thicken the sauce with one small slice of cooked squash.

Serving: Put the squash slice and sauce on the plate beside the steak. Pour a bit of olive oil on the squash and sprinkle with salt. Enjoy!

I did enjoy it indeed; that’s why I am sharing it. But I think it could be significantly improved. Butternut squash is a bit bland, and olive oil with a bit of salt didn’t quite cut it; the accompanying sauce was good, but still too mild-flavored for the squash. So next time, I will add a fifth part to the dish – aioli.

The Greater Gardening of 2026 – Part 44 – Black Beans?!

This is what standard runner beans from plants with red flowers look like:

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There is also a variety with white flowers and pure white beans. I tried to grow a few of those last year, but the germination rate was very poor, and I got barely fifty white seeds to plant this year, hoping to get more for the future. However, as readers will remember, last year I was growing the ordinary variety too, to fill the empty space due to the aforementioned poor germination of bought seeds. I was aware that I would get some hybridization, because I had that before. The result of hybridization last time was plants with half red, half white flowers, and seeds that looked just like the standard, except the pink/lilac colored parts were light brown/beige.
This year, I only planted white seeds, and I was surprised to get some plants with full red flowers from them. Well, I am even more surprised now.

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So far, I got a handful of “standard” lilac-black seeds, a lot of pure white seeds, and a bunch of pure black seeds. I have never seen pure black runner beans before, so I asked Google. Varieties with this color do exist, but on a cursory search, they are only grown in the UK and not sold in CZ.

Which is curiouser and curiouser. If I get enough black seeds, then next year I will sow only them, and we shall see what comes of it. I will probably have enough white seeds to save for the future. I also might try to grow all three varieties at once, each in a different part of the garden. That will reduce cross-pollination, but it will not eliminate it. It is a bugger. I wanted to grow two runner bean variants – white and red – in alternate years. And now I have one pure red strain in the cellar, white seeds that are somewhat unpredictable mongrels, and an intriguing new black variety that will probably throw some unexpected curveballs too.

I know that my pure red strain should remain viable in the jars in the cellar for at least two more years, so there is no big rush to renew those. I think I can afford to experiment. Especially since no matter what I do, the remaining beans will be perfectly edible. The worst that can happen is I won’t get pure color strains, but a technicolor seed roulette.

 

Sock’s Adventures: Meet the Pack

When not on holidays, we go on walks with a loose group of neighbours. When we’re all together we’Re quite an impressive pack (which means that we must take good care lest we scare some other doggo), so let me introduce them.

Meet Mistral

Big red flatcoated retriever standing behind a tree stump. Behind him is the forest floor

©Giliell, all rights reserved

Giliell: This calf sized flat coated retriever is Mistral. He’s very chill, but will steal treats from a baby. If he were a human, he’d be everybody’s favourity uncle who shows up to every family gathering, but nobody knows exactly how he’s related to anybody else. His human has to work very hard to maintain his weight, because he’s for sure not doing it.

Socks: My pal. Always up for chasing balls, but sometimes he’ll push me out of the way and steal my treats. Still love him.

Here’s Ylvie

A big flat coated retriever, a small withe mutt and a medium black mutt standing on a tree trunk

©Giliell, all rights reserved

Giliell: Ylvie is a small mutt with a lot of mischief in her little head. She and Socks love each other and will play, but currently Socks is a bit dominant at times and she’s bad at telling him “nope”.

Socks: I love Ylvie. I could gobble her up! But somehow everybody objects to my attempts of doing so.

Her brother Paul

A medium white mutt

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Giliell: Sweet Paul. If you think that’s a cute haircut: it covers the missing eye on his left side. Like many white dogs with blue eyes, he’s suffering from glaucoma and lost his left eye three years ago. If the happens, the prognosis is not good. The second eye will follow, usually within a year. Paul was lucky, he got three, but two weeks ago he went blind. It’s a big adjustment, especially for his humans. While his dad knew that this would happen, he’s still in shock. But Paul is doing quite well. He curled up for a day, but then started to explore again and now goes on walks again.

Socks: Paul is my buddy. When we first met, he did not like me. His humans said it was because I was running around so much. But now we’re buddies. He even gives me kisses!

Here’s Rougette

A black and white dog sitting, looking at the camera, licking its nose

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Giliell: Rougette should be a mess. Can you even guess what went into her? She’s a Dalmatian, Husky, Rhodesian Ridgeback mix who spent her first 6 months locked up in a basement with her parents and litter mates. But still she became a very gently dog, who’s only second to Mistral when it comes to begging for treats. She gets scared of strange men, but when Mr once joined us for a walk, she was easily bribable with treats.

Socks: Rougette is ok, but sometimes she wants too much of mum’s attention or my treats. Then I’ll snap at her. But this morning she actually wanted to play with me. That’s nice

And her big sister Kira:

A German Shepherd standing in front of her toy, tongue hanging out

©Giliell, all rights reserved

Giliell: Oh Jazzlet, you would love Kira. She’s a working line GSD, always in action. She’s full power and elegance and when you see her waiting for you to kick her ball or throw her toy, you can see the wolves in her ancestry. She’s usually not very interested in other dogs, but she’s fiercely protective of her pack. If any other dog is unkind to one of hers she’ll sure teach them the errors of their ways, which can get dangerous because, well, look at that dog.. Socks is absolutely smitten with her, I think she’s his big idol. There’s no toys like Kiras toys, even when we have the exact same toys. Running next to her is heaven, but usually she just ignores him. But then last weekend something happened that none of us expected: Kira initiated playing with Socks. Her human and I were both confused and for a moment we didn’t even realise what was happening. Socks hadn’t nicked her toy or was bothering her, but suddenly she turned around, the started play bows and initiated play. And off they went. The rest of the group was a bit further along the way and when they arrived they tried to stop them, because nobody realised they were playing.

Socks: Isn’t she amazing? When I grow up, I want to be like Kira. She’s the bestest! She also never steals treats. Perfectest dog!

Their little sister Luna:

A small black and white mutt with short hair.

©Giliell, all rights reserved

Giliell: And finally Luna, a very small (just 4 kg) rescue mutt, probably with a lot of Jack Russell. She’s keen, she’s fierce, and she can be an absolute asshole. Remember when I told you that Kira is fiercely protective? So Luna will start shit with Rougette and the Kira will intervene and discipline poor Rougette. She’s also a black hole for treats. When going for walks together or playing at the waterhole, I’ll use the opportunity to train Socks’ recall. Seem’s like I’ve also trained Rougette and Luna.

Socks: Luna is ok, I guess. Bit small for playing but man that girl can eat!

And last but not least: Benny!

A brown mutt looking like a short legged GSD

©Giliell, all rights reserved

Giliell: Benny is another rescue from Romania, I guess that’s why he and Socks get along like a house on fire. He looks like one of those infamous Corgie mixes that always look like the other breed but with a Corgie’s short legs. Benny looks like a GSD with short legs except that he has the most human eyes I’ve ever seen in a dog. His human is somewhat elderly, so he won’t walk the whole distance with us, but walk the opposite direction and meet us towards the end. When we meet, there’s no stopping the boys.

Socks: My BFF! Did you have to leave him for last? Benny’s the best. He smells nice (Giliell: he’s neutered, which seems to smell like a juicy lady) and he likes running and I like running and then we run.

Giliell: Yeah, first there were two dogs, then there are no dogs, but a lot of noise in the underbush. As long as you always come back…

The Greater Gardening of 2026 – Part 43 – Disappointing Dali

I harvested the third potato variety that I grew this year, and as the title says, I was disappointed.

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There were a lot of big tubers in there and an acceptable amount of small & tiny ones; the size distribution was not an issue. In fact, I could barely put aside 100 pieces of ~50 g seed potatoes for next year since most tubers were significantly bigger. I am still not fully decided if I will plant this variety next year, but since it does reasonably well in the Ruth-Stout method too, I am still considering it. If I decide against it, we can eat those taters too.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

The worse-than-expected problem was pest damage. Not only did I get approx. 9 kg of tubers damaged badly enough that they need to be processed asap; there were several spots with dead stalks above the ground, but no tubers underneath. They were all eaten by mice/voles. Based on how often that happened, I estimate the damage to be 10-15 kg, plus whatever we will have to cut and throw out of this bucket.

There is no late blight on the tubers; they look mostly reasonably nice and healthy. But the overall harvest was less than expected.

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I got circa 65 kg of tubers for storage. This is about the same yield per seed as what I got from Bellarosa and Camel, despite longer vegetation time. And I can confidently blame it all on effing rodents.

BTW, you can see a mouse trap under the weighed bucket. I’ve already caught two mice in my garden shed, and I’ll probably need to set traps more aggressively during the winter. A working cat would help a bit, but then I would need to buy feed for the cat, so the savings would be essentially nil.

Socks’ Adventures: Walking the Wadden

Giliell’s Notes: The Wadden is a national treasure and national park and an area with imense biodiversity, despite its occasionally bleak looks. It’s fascinating, it’s interesting, but also very dangerous. The difference between low and high tide can be several metres of water in hight and some kilometres in area. The dangerous parts are the tidal creeks. They are like rivers in the Wadden, up to several metres deep in some places, but deceptively shallow in others. At low tide, it’s no problem to cross them and walk up the the water’s edge. When the tide is turning, the edge doesn’t move much, so you might not even notice that it has changed. During the first two hours the water just fills the tidals creeks. Then they run over and the tide climbs in earnest, up to 2cm per minute. If you’re still behind the tidal creeks, you’re now trapped, as the water is now coming from both sides and the current in the creeks is strong and dangerous. That is the moment you call 110 and get to know a lot of people who will now think badly of you. If you want to experience the Wadden, go on a guided tour. If you don’t wnat to spend money, wait until the guided tours set out and stay behind them.

Socks:

They told me we were going on an adventure, but then they put me in the car. Why do all adventures have to start with the car? Anyway, we went to a different place and walked to the big water, only that the big water was gone, but instead there were people and they all went for a walk with me. That’s nice, I like going on walks. I also like the sand and the mud. You can dig in there or do wormies. I love doing wormies, but mum insists on giving me a shower afterwards. Spoilsport.

A small black and brown dog digging in the sand

©Giliell, all rights reserved

 

A small black brown dog rolling over in the sand. You can see the pattern of last tide's waves in the sand

©Giliell, all rights reserved

Things were fine for a while until we came to a creek and the nice lady who was walking with us said: “Hmpf, I thoight the water would be lower by now. There’s no help for it, we need to walk through.” And by walking, she meant swimming. Not for the twoleggers, but for poor small doggies. I can swim. I just don’t like it a lot.

Small dog swimming in the sea

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On we went and I must say, there were a lot of interesting things, but mum, cruel as she is, didn’t let me have them. No live crabs, no crab shells, no crab shells with half rotten crab parts in them. That was mean! I also wasn’t allowed to chase all them birdies.

Seagulls flying over a tidal creek and exposed sand, with wind turbines in the back

©Giliell, all rights reserved

At some point the twoleggers got very excited, claiming to have spotted some sea dogs (German for seals). Hearing that, I was very excited, too. Would they be nice? Did they want to play? I can tell you, it was very disappointing. The so called sea dogs turned out to be blobs on the far away shore. Not okay.

View across the water towards the opposite shore. On the beach you can see several brown blobs. They're real seals, promise

©Giliell, all rights reserved 

Another thing I don’t understand ist the twoleggers obsession with walking to things. The things are never intersting stuff like a nice lady’s pee puddle or a delicious dead animal or something. No, in this case it was a big metal thingy surrounded by water. You know, I wouldn’t have minede it the thing had been on the sand and not in the water, because at that point I really needed to pee, but there was nowhere to pee against.

A red withe tower in the Wadden

©Giliell, all rights reserved

Giliell’s notes: What you can see is the lower range light of a pair of guiding lights. While a lighthouse is typically telling ships where not to go, these tell ypu where to go: You line up the lower range light and the upper range light and keep them straight. Right next to it is the channel towards Bremerhaven, which is deep enough for some of the world’s biggest ships to pass through.

Anther fun thing was the water. Thankfully I didn’t need to swim again on the way back, but the ground was always wet. That’s OK, but can somebody please tell me how I got wet all over? I can’t remember having agreed to any of that!

A small black and brown dog is sitting on the sand. His wet fur is plastered against his body, except for a line of hair on his ridge, standing up like a mohawk

©Giliell, all rights reserved

Finally we returned to the land and boy was I glad! I ran towards the first tufts of grass and peeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed. 3.5 hours with no peeing is no fun, I can tell you. So if you ever go to the Wadden, remember to bring your own tree, because they’re really lacking in the tree department there. I wonder how those sea dogs are doing it.

Evening view of the Wadden

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The Greater Gardening of 2026 – Part 42 – Topsoil Tilling Tiles Trouble

Just after I wrote my answer to dschultz under my last post about why I am inflicting the double-dig torture on myself with my heavy clay soil, I went to my garden to till another row on the potato patch, when suddenly the garden fork hit resistance just barely 10 cm under ground. As I do in such a case, I tried to reposition it to work around the obstacle, expecting it to be a larger stone or maybe a half brick. Occasionally, I dig out even a whole brick, and the biggest thing I dug out so far was a ca 30×40 cm phyllite paving stone. But I could not find the edge, and when I did, I could not get the fork deep enough to lever the seemingly big thing out. Then I managed to pry several small pieces off.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

It turns out that just under the surface were buried several white tiles. I did not think much of it at that moment; an occasional tile or a piece of ceramics is not uncommon. And I continued to search with the fork and pry the tiles out.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

Then a whole stack of tiles came out, and several more after that. At this point, I decided to put the tiles into a separate bucket.

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I thought, maybe I will fill the whole bucket, and I did not want these tiles to be completely mixed with the stones I sort out of the soil, because the tiles are not as useful as, for example, road pothole filler. I was wrong about the bucket.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

I almost filled two 10-liter buckets with these pure white tiles. There were several stacks buried in that place. And, funnily enough, it appears they were at the edge of the onerous piece of land. After this, the soil became suddenly less stony and much easier to till.

I already had proof that I was not working on a natural topsoil, but these tiles are definitive proof that something other than grass was on this piece of land before my time, probably before my grandfather got the house after WW2. I do not have a way to identify the age of the tiles. I did not look for any manufacturing markings yet, but they are definitely older than 50 years, since my whole life there was nothing but grass in this part of the garden.

Socks’ Adventures: Fun with Friends

You know what I ablosutely loved about the holidays? The whole pack was together. You see, there’s the family pack, they’re almost always here. I love them to bits, but they’re all of the big two legged dogs variety that gets upset when you want to sniff their butts. And there is also the framily pack. Mum calls them  that. Framily, not pack and says that’s the combination of friends and family. The framily pack consists of more of the twoleggers, but it also has some sensible people who walk on four legs. Well, mostly sensible.

The big fellow Loki can get a bit grumpy when I run too much. Actually, scratch that, he gets grumpy when I run. I really do love him, but I wished he’d relax a bit. The little one is Penny. She’s always up for a run. And for chewing my ears. Don’t know why, they seem to be tasty.

 

A small white dog and a somewhat bigger, but not big black and brown dog are playing.

©Giliell, all rights reserved

Dad always says he has to look away because we look and sound like we’re about to kill each other, but that’s the problem with two legged dogs: they have no sense on how to play. I love rough and tumble play, but I also love chilling together afterwards.

 

A small white dog and a somewhat larger black and brown dog are lying on the grass next to each other, their tongues hanging out

©Giliell, all rights reserved

The Greater Gardening of 2026 – Part 40 – Double Digging

So, the end of the growing season is nigh. I have started digging out the potatoes, although I have stopped for now, since most of them still have not died back. But I am continuing to expand the usable area of my garden. And to do that, I have to use the double-dig method for tilling soil.

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For example, I tilled the patch on which I grew oats, and as I expanded it, I also removed the dead stump of my late apple tree. But doubling the size of the patch is not what double-dig means.

I took the garden fork to the whole area, and with the first shove I removed and turned the turf. And after I moved a whole row of turf aside, I took the fork again to the same spot, dug it as deep as it would go, and turned the underlying clay too. That way I aerate the soil up to 30 cm deep and I also had the opportunity to remove a lot of stones.

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I removed 5 small buckets (about 25 l overall) of stones from that patch, including one half-brick and one ceramic tile. Next year, I will probably only grow peas on this piece – first green peas for food, then yellow peas as green fertilizer. That plan might change depending on the weather forecast in the spring.

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I ploughed the alfalfa field, and it was difficult. Not because of the alfalfa, though. One difficulty was ryegrass, which creates underground runners that are tough like ropes. The second difficulty was the weather – it did not rain quite enough to soften the clay. I am not done with this piece yet; I will have to run it with the plough across this run later on. But I have to get a bit of rain before that; otherwise, it will be like trying to plough concrete.

In the top left of this picture, you can see that I am currently tilling this year’s potato patch, where the Ruth Stout method successfully killed the grass again. I am using the double-dig method too, and it is exceptionally difficult. Not only is the topsoil layer even thinner than in other places in my garden – only about 10 – 15 cm- but the underlying clay layer is very stony and, above all, compacted. I am now taking a break from all manual labor, because I am totally exhausted.

And here is one of the possible reasons why some parts of my garden are so difficult:

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I dug this out yesterday evening in the potato patch. It is a quartz cobble, and it looks a bit like a potato in this picture. In fact, I did mistake it for a potato for about half a second. But the most interesting things about its history were revealed when I washed it.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

Looks quite nice, doesn’t it? And it is the perfect size for a paperweight or a decoration, which is why I took it home and washed it. But why do I keep writing about a stone? Let’s look at another two quartz stones of similar size from my garden.

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Even a layperson sees that these all look quite dissimilar to one another. To my knowledge, they have very different geological histories, albeit with some similarities – they all started as sedimentary rocks. (Any actual geologists are welcome to point out any errors that I might make).

The cobble started as sedimentary sandstone that was subjected to immense pressure over millions of years until it mostly fused. But the layers and pores of the original sandstone are still very much visible. Then the massif was broken up by some geological process, and the resulting gravel was churned by running water long enough to make the stones essentially ovoid. This particular stone was then broken again and churned some more until the sharp edges were slightly rounded. And that way the stone arrived at its current shape – round top, flat-ish bottom.

The other two stones look dissimilar to each other, but they both share the same original story. They started as shale, but instead of just pressure and time, it was subjected to prolonged, intense heat from an underground magma flow. As the magma cooled into granite, the shale underwent partial melting and metamorphosed – some parts of it retained the layered structure of the shale, but with changed mineral compositions. This new rock is called phyllite, and it is the blue-greyish parts of the right stone. But some of the shale underwent so much heat that quartz completely separated into nearly pure chemical, albeit not as a pure crystal. And that is the stone on the left and the white parts of the stone on the right. These stones were never subjected to river flow; they were slowly broken off the bedrock by erosion via temperature changes and plant roots. The phyllite was thus slowly transformed into clay again, with large chunks of hard quartz in it. That is why these stones do not have the sharp edges of a rock shattered through impact, but neither do they have the rounded shape of a cobble.

It is evident that these two types of stone cannot originate in the same area naturally – and it is the first one that does not belong here. I am nowhere near a river, in fact, I am near the crest of a hill. It is the phyllite that is the bedrock here. And the cobble is evidence that this particular piece of land is not fully natural topsoil. It is possible that there was a building, a walkway, or a road there where imported cobblestones were used as filler. Or there was a heap of unsieved river sand used when building the houses.

There is no way to know exactly, but this entirely natural stone is just as much evidence of unnatural topsoil as the half brick and ceramic tile are.