I would love to find ramps and morel mushrooms!

Yes, those are two delicious native foods I look forward to every year. I always get ramps, but don't always find morels. This spring is shaping up to be a poor season for harvesting morels.

I harvested around fifty ramps seeds last fall - unfortunately traded them all away already. If I am successful in harvesting seeds this fall I would be happy to send some to you. I would also consider sending some dormant ramps bulbs to you for planting as well. They are easy to grow. LMK if interested.

Well, three days later and just like that all of my garlic is sprouting. Looks like the crop made it through winter just fine. Some rain would be helpful at this point.

None of my garlic is showing yet. I'll be watching closely. Do you mulch yours after planting?

I have never planted garlic I always forget when fall comes along. Maybe I should put a note on my calendar right now to plant it in the fall.

It is best to mulch garlic for protection from our cold Minnesota winters. This year as a test I intentionally didn't mulch several beds and they survived just fine, even though we had little to no snow cover all winter.

I find clean straw to be the best mulch, and I mulch to 4 to 6 inches in depth. Unshredded leaves are probably the worst to use because of the heavy, wet matting that occurs. Of course one has to be very careful in spring to remove any mulch at the proper time or the plants struggle to poke through.

Just think of planting garlic when it is time to plant tulip bulbs. Make a reminder to plant around the second half of October. Any sooner and a person runs the risk of too much above-ground growth before winter sets in. Seed garlic has to be acquired in August or September because it can be hard to find after that. I usually have garlic listed on my GW seed list around that time.

Local stores sell seed garlic in spring - I saw them last week at Menards for $2 for a three-pack of softneck bulbs. Softneck isn't as good as hardneck regarding flavor, and spring is not the right time to plant, but they will grow and produce small bulbs so at least a person could get some fresh, homegrown garlic this year yet for fresh eating.

Winter onions are now up, and so is the Elephant garlic. The regular garlic averages around 3-4 inches in height already. No wild ramps yet but I expect them to be up very soon with the rain we had today. I am checking for them daily now.

Update: Wild ramps popped up three days ago. As of today they range around 3-4 inches in height. I neglected to mention that my fall-planted multiplier onions and shallots are all up and doing well. Tomorrow I will be planting my remaining multipliers and shallots.

Garlic is doing great. We had three rainy days in a row this past week and that moisture is helping immensely. Did a count of what didn't come up. Get this - out of 10,000 cloves planted, 32 did not grow. Add to this 6 cloves that were dug up and eaten by some varmint. Needless to say I am very happy with the survival rate. The crop is off to a good start.

While better than expected, this success rate is no accident. It is the result of careful selection and storage of seed bulbs, followed by careful popping and selection of cloves for planting. Every seed clove was individually inspected by me prior to their careful planting last fall.