Subscribe to the Remodeler TV Blog for home remodeling and maintenance tips.

Here’s your Madison Garden Calendar for the week of July 26 from Lisa Johnson, Dane County UW Extension horticulture educator:

Vegetables: Garlic is now producing flower scapes. They rarely produce flowers, but do form bulbs at the top of the scape. The flower scapes can be chopped up and used for cooking. They should be removed to allow the underground cloves to develop to the optimum size. Garlic falls into two categories — hardneck or softneck. Hardneck varieties are more cold-hardy and have a milder flavor, but don’t typically yield as well as softneck garlic. They are called “hardneck” because the flower scapes harden into a “neck.” Softneck garlic has a stronger flavor and stores longer. Softneck garlic stems are often braided. Both types are planted as cloves in fall (early to mid-October in Madison) and this is also the time to harvest last year’s cloves.

Fruits: Watch out for infestations of the spotted wing drosophila (SWD) fruit fly in raspberries. This insect, first found in the state in 2010, can be devastating to raspberry and other soft fruits. The insect is a type of fruit fly/vinegar fly that lays eggs in the raspberry fruit just as it is starting to color up. This injury as well as the maggot feeding allows in mold spores that then totally destroy the fruit. There have been reports in Dane County already this year. If you suspect that you have this pest, send a sample to PJ Liesch at 1630 Linden Drive, 240 Russell Labs, Madison, WI 53706. Visit http://labs.russell.wisc.edu/swd/ for more information.

Today’s video features Kittleson Landscape installing a beautiful Unilock patio.

For more videos on home building, remodeling and maintenance, visit our video library.