Heritage Harvest Festival 2011

If you grow hardneck garlic you are in for a treat because the plant provides two harvests. A few weeks before the garlic bulb finishes growing, you will have an opportunity to harvest garlic scapes. These tender, mildly garlic flavored shoots are delicious. I eagerly awaited the garlic scapes to be ready for harvesting after drooling over the Garlic Scapes recipes shared in a previous post. Finally, the stalks emerged and grew. I watched and waited patiently as they reached for the sky and the

For those of us lucky enough to live in the Great Lakes region, enjoying locally harvested wild rice is one of the benefits of living here. We take an even greater enjoyment in harvesting this annual plant using traditional methods, navigating a canoe through beds of wild rice and dislodging the grains into a boat with wooden flails. Working as a father-son team allows us to switch roles, sharing both the work and the bounty. Here’s our primer on harvesting and processing wild rice for

Iowa is in harvest mode. The soybean and corn crop is coming in from the fields. My main squeeze, wife Ann, and I traveled to our Scheckel heritage site of Springbrook, Iowa on Thursday, visited some cousins, and motored west on the Highway 30, the Old Lincoln Highway. The countryside is a sea of golden brown as far as the sky meets landscape. Some fields are harvested, lying fallow, waiting for the winter snows that are sure to come. In other fields, those green monster machines, John Deere

Popular basil is easy to grow, but can be temperamental to pick. There are secrets to harvesting basil without killing the plant while still getting the most flavorful leaves for all your favorite dishes. It’s important to keep an eye on your plant, know the right time of day to harvest, and be aware of how — and how much — you clip. When to Harvest Basil Basil is an aromatic plant that loves warm weather. It’s grown easily from seed outdoors in the ground or in container gardens. Bas