All the Dirt on Gardening

Garlic Scapes Garlic scapes are the flower stalks and flower buds of hardnect garlic. If they are not trimmed off before they flower two things happen: 1) the plants' energy goes to producing flowers, inhibiting the growth size of the garlic heads underground; and, 2) the pollinators enjoy the pollen of the garlic flowers and tiny garlic plants come up everywhere in your flower beds the next year. How do I know? because more than half of the scapes in the red colander are from flower beds. They must be picked young if you want to use them. They dry up and become tough/stringy and horrible to use in pesto. Here's what I did with ours. I used scissors to cut them into pieces that would easily fit into the food processor and turned it on. Then, I added enough olive oil to make a slurry. After that came lemon juice, salt and 2 cups of walnuts. The result was a creamy spread or aoili . Yesterday we took some to Marcia Owen's house where she served an authent...

Bachelor Buttons are a much loved summer-flowering plant. But when you say Bachelor Button which one do you mean? Centaurea americana These are all called Bachelor Buttons:  Gomphrena globosa, Centaurea cyanus and montana, Ranunculus aconitifolius and Tanacetum parthenium. Seed and plant cataloges are inexact and mish-mash all of these together but in case it's useful: Centaurea cyanus is a blue lavender flowering plant that matures at 1-2 feet tall. Centaurea americana has pink flowers and matures at 3-4 feet tall. Centurea moschata has several flower colors and matures at 2-3 feet tall. Centaurea americana is an unusual Arkansas-Texas native that was discovered by Nutall. It grows 2-feet tall with 5-inch feathery purple-pink flowers in Aug. Expect them to need 4 months from seed to maturity when they can be harvested for dried flowers. Available from Select Seeds. Plants for a Future Bachelor Buttons The ones I love are Corn Flowers, Centaurea cyanus or C. mosch...