We've grown purple coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) for many years. Once established, it's a super-easy perennial, really only requiring weeding and occasional separation. It spreads quickly. By chance three years ago, we had some common milkweed (asclepias syriaca) show up in a clump of coneflowers we have growing by the light post in our driveway. Our normal reaction would have been to pull the milkweed out. It grows in some of the wilder part of the yard, but Judy had heard that some milkweed were endangered and that they were a plant that Monarch butterflies prefer, so we let it take over part of the area around the light post.

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You could probably call me all of the above right now since I just ate a mouthful of garlic scape pesto pasta! It was a little stronger and hotter than I was expecting probably due to the fact that the scapes were more 'mature' than they should have been.

I harvested about 2/3 of our garlic yesterday. Noel planted about 100 cloves last October 27th (see his blog). As you can see from the picture they are a good size – that circular spot at the bottom of the picture is a quarter.

Believe it or not I was up at 5:45 AM on a Saturday pulling garlic. I happened to be awake and was getting nervous about the garlic getting over ripe. (I also hoped that the mosquitoes would still be sleeping but I guessed wrong.) Last year ('06/'07) was the first time we had planted a variety of hard necks. I let them get too mature and the bulbs didn't keep as long. I kept waiting for the tops to fall over. Well guess what? These are hard necks not the soft necks that we'd been planting for years.

The soil was just about the perfect consistency for harvesting. If you need a little extra help getting the garlic out without breaking it you can use a garden fork or the CobraHead. Just make sure you push the blade way down at least an inch behind the bulb and come up under it so you don't damage it. The soft necks tend to break off easier so you're more likely to need some extra help.

As you can see in the picture I like to wash and trim it before I let it age. This only works if you harvest it before it gets too papery with the cloves separating. Once it gets that far just let it cure and hope for the best. I lost more than a few last year to mold (and not because I washed it) and lost a few more before the year was up because they dried up.

The one constant thing you can say about gardening is that there are new lessons to be learned each year!

Wisconsin has seen some record rainfalls in the past month. We are in the drainage basin of the Rock River, which eventually empties into the Mississippi River by Rock Island, Illinois. The huge rains contributed to flooding of the Rock and its tributary rivers and creeks, a lot of the flooding was extremely severe and damaging. Many of the farm fields around us still have acres of new ponds, three weeks after the worst of the rains.

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It's been gardening on the run for me, this year. Too many garden shows on weekends. I'm late on getting almost everything into the ground. I'm not giving up, however. While you can't say it's never too late when it comes to gardening, you certainly can push things well beyond normal guidelines and often get away with it.

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I took this photo of a couple of green strawberries today. I'm already drooling over what they will become in just a few more days.

When it comes to fresh fruits and vegetables, I've been a bit spoiled. I simply cannot enjoy a strawberry from the supermarket. Sure, they're huge compared to the relatively small fruits that grow in our garden, but when it comes to flavor there's no comparison. Our little strawberries get so red and so sweet, that any other strawberries just won't do. Of course, the supermarket strawberries are at a disadvantage. They have to travel many miles from the field to the store, and they can't be picked at their ripest or they won't survive the trip. Our strawberries travel less then a hundred yards from the garden to the kitchen -- or two feet from the vine to my mouth! There are a lot of good reasons to grow at least some of the food we eat, and the wonderfulness of ripe strawberries is usually at the top of my list (later in the season it's ripe tomatoes).

Sometimes we get too many strawberries to eat while they're still ripe, so my mom will turn them into jams and sauces to be enjoyed later. A household favorite is strawberry-rhubarb sauce over yogurt.

I can't wait!

We have been eating our homegrown shiitake mushrooms for about a week now but April 29th was the first day I picked a few spears of asparagus. They weren't very tall but who can wait to have that first taste?! We'll soon tire of the asparagus after 3-4 straight weeks of eating it every day but right now that green stuff tastes wonderful.

Speaking of green stuff I also harvested the first of the nettles. They seem to be quite prolific next to the compost pile. I've read a lot of good things about nettles and their spring tonic effect and even tasted them before but this is the first time I harvested and cooked them myself.

I snipped the tops (4-5 leaves) into a big bowl, washed them carefully without touching them and threw them into a pot of boiling water for about 7 minutes. The cooking does take the sting out! I then chopped it and sautéed it along with shallots, asparagus and shiitakes to add to the evening risotto. We drank the leftover liquid as a tea – at least some of us did..... it was like drinking spinach juice. Noel added honey to make it more palatable. Maybe next(?) time we'll incorporate into a fruit smoothie!!

I've been able to maintain my strawberries continuously for the 21 years we've had a garden here. My first berries were starts we got from a local lady who no longer lives in the area, Jan Lewein. They are a June bearing variety, but we have no idea of the name. The second batch was from my son Geoff, who got them from his job at Nokomis Gardens in East Troy, Wisconsin. These are Honeyeye, also a June bearer. Both varieties are excellent and we've been able to keep the beds vigorous, healthy and productive for going on 22 years.

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I usually clean out my asparagus bed in February. I don't trim back the mature fronds in the fall as a lot of gardeners do, because I read that leaving them to grow until spring gives more energy to the roots, This year, because we didn't get our typical February warm spell, the job did not get done. We had heavy snow cover until just a few weeks ago, and because of a hectic weekend show schedule, yesterday was my first real day in the garden.

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Sweet potatoes are considered one of the best foods available. They probably contain a better all-around mix of useful nutrition than any other food that one can grow in the garden. Sweet potatoes are associated with Latin America and the southern US, but they are quite easy to grow in Wisconsin and actually have been an important commercial crop here for many years.

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As I mentioned in my last post I have a new place in Austin. I am just now starting the vegetable garden. (Yes, late for Austin, but I have been on the road promoting the CobraHead for the last couple of months.) The only photo in this post is the before shot. We have to put a small fence around the yard as our dogs, Zaney and Sweet Pea, are notorious diggers among other things. The dogs' love of rotten vegetables required me to fence in the compost pile as well despite my aesthetic reservations.

I am preparing the raised beds for this garden without the benefit of any motorized equipment along the lines of the method popularized in the US by Alan Chadwick.

The spot that I chose in the backyard gets the most sun. Pecan trees and hackberries shade most of the area. The front yard actually gets the most sun, but I hesitate to put vegetables with intensive maintenance requirements in public view, given my travel schedule. The front yard will get fruit trees and herbs, but that is another project and post.

This morning the lid on the compost bucket in the kitchen would no longer close, so it was time to make the first compost pile at my new home.

Unlike my dad, Noel, I prefer to build my compost in layers first with materials high in carbon, then a nitrogen layer, followed by a cap of soil, repeating the process until the pile gets to be three to four feet high. I have to mention here that I learned a large part of what I know about composting from my gardening mentor, Bruce Blevins.

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