All the Dirt on Gardening

The Edamame (Glycine max L.) is about ready to harvest. You may already know that Edamame is the proper name for a soy bean. We started growing them before you could easily buy them frozen in bags at the grocery store. None of our local stores sell them fresh. The food guru Mark Bittman has an Edamame preparation video online at the New York Times. We just grow 8 or 10 plants to have the pods as snacks. Preparation is simple: Boil in salted water and eat like a peanut, removing the bean from the pod. The Blackberries are being hit hard by the heat and are dramatically slowing down production of ripe fruit. The flowering has stopped completely, although we have watered them to try to keep them going. Amazingly, this Black Beauty lily reached 6-feet tall and is still blooming to the tune of a dozen flowers open every day. The weather has barely fazed it's rugged nature. Anything happening where you are?

THORNLESS BLACKBERRY bushes with names like Navajo, Arapaho Cherokee, Choctaw and others were developed at the University of Arkansas. The canes are erect, heavy bearing, free of thorns and relatively disease free . Our original plants from Stark Brothers were planted in January 2000. The first year they laid on the weed cloth and did little but since then they have stood tall and pumped out the fruit. 8-years later, the suckers are producing as you can see in the photo. GARLIC is an irresistible plant: It never lets you down, every head and every clove is valued at the stove and table as it seasons pizza,soup, salad, jars and jars of pickles, eggplant caviar, canned tomatoes etc. Have you ever had baked garlic as a bread spread? Oh, my. The cloves we put in last October are almost ready to harvest and dry. The photo is of the scapes that form on the top of the garlic greens. The scapes are usually removed to aid in bulb development and can be eaten in salads or made into a pesto. Was...