Peppi, Your strawberries were cheaper in Chitown than here (the winter strawberry capital of the world). Maybe because we are in the middle of our Strawberry Festival.

Enjoy!

Peppi, I had to go check the on-line prices at Fresh Thyme in Grand Rapids to see if I could get a comparison.

Asparagus is 88 cents a pound, romaine is $2 for a package of three, organic, strawberries are $1.50 a pound. Cauliflower was $1.99 at Aldi last week. So, if I go to Grand Rapids, I can get some good deals. Fresh Thyme is a "farmer's market" but not really, it's a store, a new chain that just opened a store here. I haven't visited yet, but I will!

And I just ordered 100 asparagus crowns, which means I plant this year, don't pick next year, and then the following year, if they grow, I have LOTS of asparagus!

Snow here too. Yesterday the sun shone, then it got foggy, then it rained. Rain turned to sleet, then hail. Soon it was snowing and the wind was 30 MPH. All in less than 10 hours, LOL. It was probably about the same there at your place, just across The Lake.

Annie

Spring is not entirely convinced yet. My road is at the atrocious barely negotiable state of muddy awfulness that implies spring here. But the temperature is plummeting, we have flurries and a nor'easter is forecasted. Sigh....

Not sure about produce prices this week but my pea greens are almost ready to harvest.

Cathy, the berries are from Plant City. Each year I wait for those as they have the best flavor. The CA ones are always white in the center and tasteless.

Annie, I see the Princess will have a stand in awhile with asparagus.

Yes, Plant City the "capital" and it is where we go to "pick your own". There are fields of strawberries as far as you can see for miles.

Annie - you can harvest some of the asparagus next year. Just be sure to leave a stalk or two and let them make those gorgeous fronds. My beds are 8 years old and it is way past time to dig and divide. I ate the first two tips this morning - uncooked right out of the garden! Weather here is warming and all the flowering trees are in full bloom, cherry, pear, redbud, almond, and native Carolina Silverbell, dogwoods soon. The grocery stores here are pushing So American and Mexican produce at good prices, but not quite as good as pkramer60's. That's when it's time to invest in a big freezer, I'll bet.

To all - find a local U-pick and get the best tasting strawberries, they also offer already picked. There are two organic farms near me that I haunt for several weeks during the season. If you're going to make jam - use the best. It does make a difference.

Nancy

Nancy, I have an established bed of asparagus that came when we bought this house, but it only has a couple dozen plants. I never realized I should be digging or dividing, I'm sure it's been there for at least 10 years. Now I'm going to have to go do my homework.

I'm a big proponent of pick your own produce. Here I pick strawberries, blueberries, peaches, both sweet and sour cherries. Now that we've moved, and only 20 miles away, there appears to be no U-pick places this far inland, which I think is odd, it's not that far away. So I'll have to drive back to White Cloud to pick my own berries!

I do still have some strawberries and about a ton of rhubarb in the freezer, so I can make pie for Mother on Easter.

Peppi, I keep trying to find the "niche" here that provides a product I can actually grow and sell. Maybe asparagus, although Elery is lobbying for an acre of garlic.

Annie

Wow, I was thrilled to find CA asparagus for $1.98 a bunch at Trader Joe's. It was at least a pound. Mine still has about a 4" snow cover but the blueberries and strawberries at the other end of the garden are all thawed out and showing a little green, as are the weeds.

Agmss, we escaped mud season this year...very few frost heaves. The ground only froze a couple of inches deep so everything melted nicely. Hopefully not a sign of another bad fire year, although there is a good snow pack high up.

Annie, it seems like asparagus would be less labor for a shorter time, but garlic was worth a fortune at the farmer's market last summer. I think The Kid paid two or three dollars for a bulb of a new-to-me Russian variety. Mine is still under snow, but I'm hopeful it survived the 'heat stroke' from last year. I found a couple of bulbs in the pantry that had afflicted cloves and they were sprouting. What did survive should be super garlic, hehe.

Well, I'll find out, I think, which is less work, LOL. I think garlic isn't much work, really, just plant it in October, let it sit until the ground thaws in May, weed in June and July, then pull it, mulch the bed so weeds don't take over and start again in October. Of course an acre is quite a lot more than my small patch of 100 cloves or so...

Asparagus needs work all season to keep it weed free, but a planting lasts many years, so it's maintenance instead of a new crop.

And so, I guess I'll try both. (grin) Or maybe a you-pick strawberry patch, if I could keep the turkeys out of everything.

Annie

Wow, Peppi, you did get good deals. I got three quarts of Plant City strawberries for $5 at Krogers last week. Haven't gotten any real deals on anything recently.

I have never heard of digging and dividing an established asparagus bed. A bed should last for many, many years. Mine is pushing 15 and still going strong. I expect it to last my lifetime (I'm 71 now and hope to have at least another 15 years.).

And if fusarium crown rot is the problem, you can both cure it and prevent it by salting the bed with food grade rock salt in late winter. Until the advent of chemical pre-emergents after WWII, it was done simply to keep weeds down. Recent research has shown that it prevents the crown rot, which has become a huge problem in commercial beds since salting was abandoned for chemicals. And I've been salting my bed for at least 12 years, since I first identified the crown rot.

lacey, according to Michigan State University Extension, most people do not divide an asparagus bed for two reasons. The first is that it is just so much work, the roots grow deep and thickly and if the crown is damaged, the transplant will die. They usually just tell people to buy new crowns. The second reason is that crown rot you talked about. If you are transplanting old crowns to a spot to be combined with new crowns, the crown rot can spread to the entire patch. If you are just lifting and dividing your own crowns and not adding new ones, I think that would be a moot point.

So my choice is to plant new crowns or renovate the old patch, but it will be a lot more work to renovate the old one, since I don't know how many years (or decades) it's been there. Less cost but more time, I suppose it'll come down to how ambitious I am!

Annie

Good for you Annie! So when I come for a visit I'll be served your garden fresh asparagus?

I don't know the name of the flower because Bernard planted it. I thought it was a Proteus at first, but he told me that it isn't. I have more herbs growing around it, and Bernard is back now helping with landscaping, and he cleaned up my herb garden. Not much will grow in my poor soil, but I do have mint and oregano that are doing okay, and some rosemary in a different part of the yard. I keep the rosemary because I think it repels mosquitoes, but I don't know how effective it is.

Your pea greens look really nice. I have some volunteer sorrel that is growing, and I really like it and should probably plant some. I need to plant more dill as well, as my old plant is about to go to seed.

Yes, Annie, digging and dividing an established asparagus bed would be a daunting task. I can't imagine doing it. Especially when it isn't necessary!

The produce is definitely looking up in the market. I've had the best celery from SoCal ever. The first batch was young and full of green tops. We are getting more a bit larger from the same grower. I've been sprouting the root ends and already have one planted...they will grow all summer for cuttings in my deck herb container.

In my area, we are in that sort of unexciting time of the year when winter is ending, but the really exciting produce of spring isn't here quite yet.

I'm awaiting what I view as the harbinger of good things to come: ramps. Then morels, asparagus. strawberries...

Spring is here! DH came home with artichokes. I weighed them at 17.4 oz and 16.8, lol. Real beauties.

I have been waiting for them. We get our fill every year almost twice a week...then the next seasonal treat comes along...then the garden. Good basil also....

That basil is beautiful! The artichokes look exactly like what I am cooking right now; love them.

Lars, I'm still amazed whenever you say you have pineapple in your backyard. You are the only person I know who grows pineapple. As for those swallowtail caterpillars, I plant herbs on purpose for them. Everyone thinks I've lost my mind because I plan to plant milkweed for the Monarchs too, and milkweed is a weed here that everyone tries desperately to kill.

Cathy, come in May and June and I'll feed you all the asparagus you want, with rhubarb pie for dessert. Come any time, I'll find SOMETHING to feed you!

agmss, those pea shoots look so nice and green and spring like. I'm betting you are getting socked with a snowstorm right now, though...

sleevendog, that basil looks magnificent. Elery would love your artichokes. It's not something I'm good at yet. I grew some one year, but if I just pluck the leaves and dunk in butter, they taste like butter. If I put them into that cheese/artichoke dip, they taste like cheese. Elery stuffed some of the hearts and it tasted like the stuffing. They just don't seem to have a definable flavor to me. Maybe the ones we get here just aren't right, I'm sure they'd be shipped from somewhere a long way from me.

Annie

Annie, here's a photo of the Swallowtails we get here, photo from Feb 20, 2016

Here's how most of the photos look:

Beautiful pic, Lars. They are so hard to photograph.

Annie, be sure you plant the right kind of milkweed:

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/01/plan-save-monarch-butterflies-backfires

Lars, that looks very much like the Swallowtail butterflies we have here, although not identical. We seem to have two distinct types, one is more yellow than black and the other is mostly black with some blue, but very little yellow. They're beautiful and I like to watch them.

Thanks for that, writersblock. I live in Northern Michigan, so my native milkweed dies over the winter. I have no intention of buying milkweed seed or plants, I have a nice stand of it right next to my pond. I remember when I was small we'd break open the pods and spread the silky contents with the wind, and use the pods as boats in the pond.

Since I grow everything including my hay, garden, fruit trees and pasture with no chemical "assistance", Michigan State University tells me that it is safe to gather seeds from my own native milkweed and help my patch along. They even offered to send me seeds and instructions, but I told them I had plenty, thanks. (grin)

I had a lot of butterflies and bees last year, I make plantings especially for the pollinators who work so hard in my garden, it's the least I can do. I still would like to get honey bee hives, but Elery is leery since I'm allergic to bee stings.

Annie

The butterfly in my photos is Anise Swallowtail (Papilio zelicaon ), andits range does not extend east of Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, although it has made it into extreme western North Dakota, and so it will live very far north. There are a lot of similar swallowtail butterflies, and there is one in UK that looks identical to this one, but the eye spot on the tail does not have a pupil (the one in California has a black pupil), and I think it lacks the yellow lateral stripes on the body, which are characteristic of the Anise Swallowtail.

Here are a couple from my yard in Venice from around 1999, I think:

The anise swallowtail caterpillars like to eat wild anise, and there is a lot of that in the Santa Monica Mountains, but they also really like dill, but if I find them on my dill, I move them to the parsley, since I never have that much dill. I did plant some more dill today and also bought some Mammoth Dill seeds, hoping I will get larger plants.

Further confirmation of spring....Mr. and Mrs. Duck showed up today to scope out the pond as a nesting sight. Normally they show up in early May. They rejected the property as the pond is still covered up with plastic but I am sure they will be back. In the meantime, there is a snow storm hitting just north of us in Wisconsin with prediction of 12 inches. Just rain, storms and a dusting for up.

Lars, beautiful shot of the butterflies. I scatter dill seeds for them throughout the garden and in my alley for them to munch on. For the adult BF's and the bees, my pond are is full of coneflowers.