Dutch - Winter is over now it's mud season! Congrats on the snow out! Hopefully the flooding won't be too bad up there. Have you fertilized with Milorganite yet?

My garlic showed up above the mulch a couple weeks ago but I didn't get out there until a week ago to pull off some of the leaf mulch and fertilize. There were a couple dozen that were trapped beneath the mulch that I had to liberate and were yellow. Most of them had greened up by this past weekend. I fertilized with Urban farms Vegetable formula that is pretty high N but with some P and K as well. I'll use Urea going forward.

The ground up here is still frozen, and the snow is not yet completely gone. OTOH they are forecasting high 60's for Wednesday; so we will almost certainly be getting massive snow melt from farther north both down the Mississippi and down the St Croix. My house is about as high as it gets in Minneapolis; so I expect not to even get a damp basement from this much less any kind of flood damage. I guess one could say it is pretty much all down hill from there, literally.

So far only one variety of my garlics has put in a show but I expect a lot more by week end. I have topsets starting to show and it looks like the two bunches of scallions from the grocery store I planted last summer are going to also. They got very close to waist high before going dormant last fall.

Once the ground thaws enough to show some more shoots I will be putting down the first Milorganite and thinking about the first layer of mulch (50/50 coir/sterile humus), but the garlic will need to be maybe 4 inches up for that . Then as soon as possible another two inches of leaves, if I have enough of them....

Got my Iowa and Minnesota fishing licenses last week, too. So I am going to have to do a lot of fishing this year to justify that! Gotta cut back the peaches this week too. I have some seedlings that got out of hand and will have to be "disciplined" some. But I will go fishing Wednesday for sure!

Dutch - doesn't Minnesota allow seniors over 65 to fish without a license? Missouri does whether you're a resident or not. A group of about 15 guys are planning a fishing trip the last weekend in April. Probably catch mostly crappie during the spawn but also the occasional walleye or white bass. The lake also has good catfish and is the best lake for tiger musky in MO but I don't have the patients for them.

My brother lives in Stillwater near the St. Croix but he's up on the bluff and in no danger of flooding. He wouldn't know it anyway since he's in Kona, Hawaii right now. My sister used to live in Red Wing ~1/4 mile from the MS river. It would have had to flood at record levels to get to her house.

I'm going to put down a soaker hose on my garlic in a couple weeks after they get a few inches taller. Then I'll add back some of the shredded leaf mulch. I don't anticipate a wet summer. I'll take average rainfall after last year's drought.

Under 16 here can fish without a license but not us older folks. I get a break on park permit parking sticker and that is about it. Crappies here don't spawn until the end of May beginning of June, but there are shallow warming areas that can be real hot before that. Up here nearly any water that could float one got muskies put in it at one time or another. I stumble across them, all sizes of them, from time to time fishing crappies. I usually land a couple every year on my UL crappie tackle. There is still very little open water to fish and all the remaining ice is completely untrustable. I have one spot I will be trying tomorrow. Street drain has been running there for quite a while now so there may be some action. That has been one of the early spots I have fished in the past. One other thing we only get one rod with one hook at a time...

Copra is pretty much dead and gone now. I still have some seed. Patterson is the "recomended" replacement. Fedco has seed for Crystal Dawn which is supposed to be an open pollinated selection out of Copra. I have some of that, too. I want a cooking onion, and since I am only cooking for myself I don't want a huge one either. So maybe I will just go back to Stuttgarter. I seem to be in a minority who doesn't have a problem growing onions from sets either and the Stutts are available all over and probably will continue to be; I can easily go back to that if my current attempts to grow my own sets flop. My late mother nearly always grew her cooking onions from sets and had them keep until early spring.

When it comes to leeks, I have never grown them, nor the scallions at all either until last year. I think I will just cheat and get some well rooted ones from the organic section of my local CUB, and just see what happens. The scallions I got that way last year took right off and grew into waist high plants with quite thick stems (also pretty strong flavored!) and look to have wintered over, too. I also planted some Guardsman last summer and they appear to have wintered over as well. If I come across any of the red/purples available bunched with any kind of roots, I will try to cheat with them too... :-) (I have never had any luck growing onions from seed under lights.)

Has anybody had experience with Red Beard as a colored scallion? Is it winter hardy? I am looking to have a set of perennial onion beds for early season cooking and salads.

Not very hardy. About 10 years ago, I grew Red Beard as part of a 9-variety trial of bunching onions. It had very poor survival after wintering over in the garden - less than 50%. Never was able to taste them. I had intended to test their culinary properties after they had multiplied, but the few plants that survived did not divide, so they were turned under.

Dutch - The local mom and pop gardening store that I always get my Dixondale onion starts from has carried Copra for the last few years but this year they had Patterson listed as a replacement instead. Dixondale still lists Copra on their website but not Patterson. I bought a bunch of Patterson to give it a try as well as my usual Candy, Red Candy , and Superstar. I grew Evergreen hardy white bunching onions from seed as well as Megaton and King Richard leeks. All of my cool season plantings are out except Broccoli which will go out this weekend. We're supposed to dip down into the upper 20s on Sunday and Monday mornings. Shouldn't be a problem for what I already have out.

My garlic are really putting on some size with the warm weather this week and the feeding I gave them last week. We are expecting rain today and Friday but the storm track I saw this morning had most of it going north of me. Probably move through in mid afternoon just as the Royal's opener starts.

That is a nice feat landing a Musky on an UL rig. I would think they would bite you off without a steel leader. I know the Pike usually would when we were Walleye fishing in Ontario. Missouri now allows spider rigging for crappie and white bass. It seems like cheating to me and not at all sporting but I'm sure it would fill up your limit quickly. I'll stick with one rod and one hook.

Thanks zeed, too bad, Red Beard is so pretty... But I am working on perennial onions and they have to be zone 4 hardy here in Minneapolis. What I am hoping for just now is a cooking onion that is available out of the garden as early as possible. Right now that is either the top sets which are coming up or the grocery store scallions planted last summer and are also coming up. I have plenty of Copra sets and multipliers for the earliest planting, which is not likely for another week yet. I expect the garden to be fully thawed then, which BTW is two weeks earlier than it was 30 years ago, even with the past harsh winter.

Hija Jack, Muskies are over rated. Pound for pound pike fight harder. Except for cats and carp I fish UL exclusively, and fish small crappie offerings, smaller than you are probably used to down in Mizzou, generally 1/32 oz and lighter on 4# Polyflex. That does not rule out occasional bonus game fish. Last evening that was a 17" largemouth, which pushes the strength of 4# line real hard. Both pike and muskies "sip" at the tiny lures I use and quite often I get a hook up in outside of the upper lip. Then so long as I keep a tight line and the drag works properly, it is a matter of fighting off the short runs and head shakes they use to try to cut the line. They know the difference between the stretch and cutability of a "panfish line" and the lack of stretch in a musky rig and fight differently one from the other. So long as they do not get a cut, they tend to keep trying instead of making the kind of run that will spool a small reel. Once they figure out that the cut is not there, they are too tired to make a long enough run. Personally I wish they had just left the tooth carps up in their natural waters though. The native pike are already balanced against the rest of the local prey pyramid, while the muskies are simply outsized.

My garlics are all putting in a show this spring except for one which was an experiment and in real bad shape when planted. Virtually all the Music is there both up to about 3" and all looking very uniform across their whole bed. I put out 55 Music and I doubt if more than 2 or 3 of them are missing. Maiskij is generally up but not uniform at all and Japanese is trailing. This is the first year for Maiskij, so if there are any good bulbs it will get another year to adapt. The others are there but neither failures nor anything to brag about yet.

I have multipliers to plant yet two yellow and a few Green Mountain. One of the multipliers came from Jungs and the other is the potato onion from SSE. Plus a bagful of Copra sets. I am going to run out of room before I get every thing in unless I start using my front yard!

Nice weather for the next three days; so I should have a whole lot more planted by weekend. Maybe even some fishing too. The crappies have to be up on the mud flats taking the sun and gourging on the early insect hatches by this time.

Dutch - it sounds like you'll have a good stand of garlic this year. Mine are doing very well so far. As usual German White are leading the pack in size and stem thickness. Chesnok Red and Spanish Roja are doing pretty good as well. I've fertilized them once with Texas Vegetable food and once with Urea along with the Garden Tone I applied before planting last fall. I'll give them more more feeding of Urea around May 1 and call it quits. I usually start seeing scape development around May 20 but I expect that to be delayed a bit this year with the late arriving spring temps. My asparagus was 2 weeks later than normal this year.

I read a post over on the TV site from TomNJ that giving garlic and onions too much elemental nitrogen can be detrimental and cause what is called 'whisk brooming' which represents as thin wispy leaves coming out of the center of the stem. I have had that in the past on just a few plants.

The recommended amount of N was mentioned as 150 lbs/acre. When using Urea (46-0-0) I use 2 Tbls. per gallon of water and that is used on 10' of row. Not sure how that equates to pounds per acre.

It's been fairly dry here but we got a nice steady rain last evening. Several days with rain in the forecast next week as well but nice weather is expected for my crappie fishing trip this Thursday - Sunday. The crappie spawn just got rolling good in the last week so we shouldn't have any trouble getting our limit each day.

I think I overdid it a bit...

My Music looks real nice and uniform and is already on its way to be the largest plant tops of the whole works again. Siberian is also very uniform but smaller which is also usual. Those two varieties I have had the longest and they seem to have settled in real well. I think that first thing tomorrow, I will put down the first layer of the same kind of mulch that eliminated all my weeding last year, but only on the Music. The others aren't big enough yet. Too many nice things to plant, too little time to do it in and too little space available anyway... (also this old boy aint got the git up in his getalong that he used to...)

Judging by the crappie spawn, you are a full month ahead of us and then a little. Luck to you.

Dutch - I heard you got down into the low 20s over the weekend up there. That will put a damper on any gardening for a bit. It got down around 40 here Sunday morning.

The fishing was pretty good on Thursday and Friday morning but then the wind picked up to 30+ mph and the crappie really slowed down. With the wind blowing up white caps the fishing was pretty tough and most of us didn't fish more than a couple hours Saturday morning.

Too chilly to be outside and lightly raining early anyway; so I worked inside for a while over the last couple of days.

Here in the city it wasn't too bad. I doubt we got below freezing here in the heart of Minneapolis, but still chilly enough. Warming up some now, but slowly. I got out fishing for a while this afternoon, landed 4 nice bluegills and hooked into what I think was a carp that took off for the next county and nothing I could do to stop it, not on UL and 4# test. Still no crappies this spring yet for me. Cold fingers though :-)

I ran out of light space for my indoor starts; so I am doubling it. Lots of sprouts of all sorts and not enough garden space for all of them. Sad. Still about as much as I can handle anymore. I am learning to cook appropriately for one; I guess I will have to learn to garden that way, too...(especially since that is about all the space I can handle anymore!)

Saw the first signs of a scape on one of my early soft necks yesterday. It won't be long until the harvesting fun starts,

I spotted scapes on my Brown Tempest a couple days ago. This is my first year growing it. It was the first to sprout and it seems to be leading the pack now too.

We had frost nipping around the suburbs this week and you lucky folks are that far along already! Let us know how your Brown Tempest works out. Up here in Minnesota I have pretty good response from Siberian, which is also a marbled purple stripe. It gives me the same kind of uniform stands I get out of Music, but normally lags a bit and never gets tops or bulbs the same size as Music, although they are the two with the largest tops, bigger than any other kind.

My garlic has been a dismal failure this year - I blame the extremely wet and cool-ish spring. Everything was looking good until May came along with 20+ days of rain. I had a bed with 40 Music that is almost entirely rotten - I might get two or three bulbs out of it. The bed of 40 German Giant did somewhat better, but the plants/scapes were very small, as were my Russian Reds. So disappointing, especially the Music - I have been trying to build up my seed stock of that one since it has performed better than the others over the past two years. I am planning to amend the soil in these beds heavily this fall with compost and manure in the hopes of better drainage and a better outcome next year.

Very nice looking onions and garlic.

Mine here in Minnesota have some time yet to go. The farthest along are the multipliers some of which are showing very nice nests. Hoping to have them all size up some yet. I am starting to get impatient, but then I have to remember that this spring started easily a month late, and most things in the garden have not yet caught up. In most recent past years I would have had ripe tomatoes (the little 4th of July ones) by this time, but not this year. Lot of greens set on the Glacier and some of the 4th of July, but nothing red yet.

The only harvest I have complete now is my tulips. They are all curing on the racks.