Morel Mushroom

May is usually a good weather month in Wisconsin and though the nice weather was slow in coming, it's finally here. This is when the green explodes outside. The trees, the uncultivated farm fields, and all the open lands are lush. Things are growing fast and mowing the lawn is a twice a week chore.   The ground is warming up quickly; daytime temperatures are in the 70's. I'm happy to be in the garden.

But May started out very cold. The finicky pear trees put out almost no blossoms, so we won't have that harvest this August. And I've got a lot more weeds to deal with than normal this year, as I did not do my usual covering of the garden beds with leaves due to a winter that came too early.   But things are mostly good. We're eating asparagus and all kinds of salad greens from the garden. The peas I planted a month ago look great. Onions and leeks are planted and starting to stand tall. I've got most of my more tender crops off to a good start outside in a holding bed that I've had covered with a hoop tunnel.   I've got a couple weeks of heavy planting ahead of me, but that's what I like to do.

I wasn't expecting to find any morel mushrooms, this year. It seemed like the temperatures and precipitation were just wrong. But I took a walk into the woods on Memorial Day and found one of the best single day harvests I've yet had. I picked well over a pound in short order. These things often sell for over forty dollars a pound. That's not worth it in my opinion, I like the cultured shiitakes we grow on logs a lot better, but morels are still fun and still free.

Most of our readers signed up for the CobraHead newsletter at a garden show. Our inducement to get sign-ups is a $50 gift certificate for CobraHead products from our website store. Recent gift certificate winners include Ben Kizer, who signed up at the Green Metropolis Fair in Chicago, Maureen Fox, who signed up at the Wisconsin Master Gardner Conference in Appleton; Jackie Powell, who found us at the Mother Earth News Fair in Asheville; Rachel Reyna, a visitor to our booth at the Philadelphia Flower Show; and Jackie Rains, who signed up at the Madison Garden Expo. Thanks to all who signed up and congratulations to our winners.

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Thanks for reading our newsletter.

Noel and the CobraHead Team