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One of the wonderful things about having an explosively healthy garden is that we always have plenty of free plants if we want to make a new bed. We've just about run out of room, but we did get around to planting this last corner about a month ago with the offshoots of our established plants.

For anyone who's even more amateur than I, you have a volunteer on your hands when you see a smaller, separate plant of the same type, next to the one you planted. Dig it up and find it a new home, and it will grow just as large as your original! It will probably be even hardier, too.

The largest plant in the photo is maiden grass, which might look half dead, but it's impossible to kill. In fact, we pried this one out of the ground after several neighbors complained that they couldn't see around it when they were trying to turn the corner around our lot. It's easily 8 feet tall by the end of the summer, crowned with gorgeous red plumes.

The others, which are also looking pretty sad right about now, are dwarf fountain grass, yarrow, Russian sage, sedum and echinacea. I especially recommend this last one; it has gorgeous flowers, which are in full bloom right now. A friend of ours makes a tincture from the dried plants, which he swears keeps him healthy through the winter. But if you let them dry in your garden, you'll get some wonderful visitors in the late summer - goldfinches love them. In fact, those visitors are probably the reason we have so many plants: they're very efficient at spreading seeds!

Two quick ways to engage your preschooler in gardening

I took our nearly four-year-old daughter Z to a plant sale last weekend and she had a wonderful time. I noticed that we have a couple of unspoken rituals related to plant browsing.

• When we're looking at the herbs, we always pull off a leaf and crush it between our thumb and finger to release the scent of the herb. I started doing this in March when Z and I were shopping for our spring garden plants as a way to distract her from some now-forgotten crisis. Apparently it made an impression on her as she's done it every time since. Last weekend as she was walking down a greenhouse aisle she wandered over to an unnamed herb, plucked a leaf, crushed it between her fingers and said, "Yummm. This basil smells so good." She completely surprised me at her proper identification!
• During that first spring shopping trip, I told Z she could pick out her very own plant for our garden. Now, every time we buy plants, Z picks one out. She shows more interest when she's picking out her own plant and she carefully watches her plants for signs that they need water or for flowers to pick or fruit or veggies to eat. The second or third plant she picked out, she claimed that she could see it growing right then and there.

We're working on a raised bed that we hope will be ready for fall planting that is situated next to her playhouse in our garden. Our plan is to let her control the planting of this bed - pick out what she wants to plant, tend to the plants, or just play in the dirt if she wants to.

Location, Location, Location

Most of my herbs are doing the best this year that they have ever done. I think I am finally (after eight years of trying) getting basic herb growing down pat. It all comes down to location.

Being in Central Texas means I can't always go by what the back of seed packets, those little labels on transplants, or most books say about whether or not plants require full sun. I’ve been growing herbs based on trial and error from the start. I'd plant according to the seed packet or little label for herbs which where supposed to live forever, only to have them shrivel in the hot, seemingly endless Texas heat. Summer here really extends from end of May to the end of September, if we are lucky. Hot is over 95 degrees, which if the past 2 weeks are any indication, we are in for a very long, unbearably hot, countless- days-over-100 summer. Thus, parsley does not really like full sun, nor does basil, oregano, and newly transplanted mint. If I can provide plants a shady late afternoon, they are more likely to hang on longer and not whither under the hottest part of the day, between 4 and 6 p.m.

My parsley going to seed!

Which brings me back to my trial and error. For years I have tried to get my parsley to weather over the summer. It should have a two-year life span before going to seed. Until this year, my parsley never went to seed; it just got fried in the sun. With a very shady spot on the northeast side of the house, and part of the yard irrigation system, my parsley not only weathered last summer, but has gone to seed. Success! Best case scenario, my parsley will reseed and I will not need to buy any parsley transplants next year.

I also struggled for years to find the perfect spot for mint. I discovered if I planted in the fall, the location didn’t matter nearly as much as if I planted in the spring. In the spring, it needed afternoon shade to make it through the summer. If I planted in the fall, it was established enough to make it through the summer without a problem, letting us enjoy fresh mint tea all year long.

Oregano and Lemongrass. Anyone need some oregano?

With exception of the dill in my garden, my herbs fill the beds around my house. Slowly, all the nandina bushes have been transplanted out of the beds into the back property line of our house. I find this is the best way to tend the herbs. It allows my husband to weedeat the oregano on occasion. Otherwise that plant, which can’t be killed, would take over the whole front yard. By walking past my basil plant whenever I walked into the house, I can deadhead it daily, allowing it to grow into a wonderful three-foot-tall bush of pure goodness. This also allowed the basil to get afternoon shade and guaranteed water twice a week from the irrigation system. Plus it makes it much easier to throw some herbs into whatever is for supper.

Now that I have my basic herbs figured out, it's time to expand. I've attacked my lone basil plant too aggressively for cooking the past few nights; I could benefit from a second plant. I still have time - up until September in fact - to plant new basil plants. Like most other herbs, it just needs the right location in order to flourish for months.

Putting off summer

Those of us in warmer parts of the U.S. are starting to see our basil plants flower, and experience if not book-learnin' will tell you that any plant you eat the leaves of (there's a name for that, I'm sure) gets bitter if you let it go to seed. We gave up our salad mix to the weeds weeks ago; despite our best intentions, the weeding just stopped being worth the effort. The half-dozen basil plants we put into our new bed (ultimately they all ended up in the ground) are lush and full.

We've stripped or broken off the flowering heads of our basil plants for years as we struggle against the inevitable march of summer and squeeze a few extra weeks of fresh herbs. This year we have a new tip: To most effectively stall flowering, break off not just the flowering tip but the top six inches or so of each flowering stem. The leaves are the day's harvest, and the pruning will encourage new leafy growth before the urge to flower resurges.

Try as we might, though, summer wins in the end. We'll make a huge batch of pesto this month and enjoy it through the summer months.

Gardening for flavor in Texas

I don't like vegetables. Wait, not a good way to start a gardening post. Let me rephrase that. I don't like industrial, grocery-produce or canned vegetables.

I grew up around gardeners as far back as I can remember. We didn't buy any produce in the grocery store, save the occasional citrus or celery. All vegetables and fruit we ate either came from our family garden or from those of my grandparents. I didn't eat vegetables in the cafeteria at school or in restaurants - especially not peas or spinach. Green beans were somewhat passable, especially when cooked with bacon. Applesauce, never.

When my husband met me, he couldn't believe the lack of veggies in my life. I told him I loved peas, lima beans, green beans, asparagus, spinach, yet I never bought those in the store. After one trip to Virginia to visit my family, he understood why.

My own garden started with herbs - basil, oregano, mint, rosemary, and thyme. Living in Central Texas means that with the exception of basil and cilantro, I don't need to replant my herbs every year. Since I started, I also have a huge cilantro plant, two parsley plants that I will never be able to use up, lemongrass, and four varieties of mint (we were in search of the perfect cold mint garden tea). I know little about flowers and bushes and ornamental plants. So in the beds around the front of my house are my herbs. When making a pasta sauce, I walk out my front door and chop some fresh basil. While making salsa, I go clip some cilantro. It works out nicely and my food tastes much better.

After we moved into our house "in the country" (fifteen minutes from downtown Austin), I started a garden and tried the veggies my parents grew in Virginia. I failed. (More on that another time). I now have a 12x12' foot garden surrounded by chicken wire to keep the armadillos and rabbits out. That's right, armadillos!

That was then, this is now. We are finishing up with our winter garden - beautiful spinach left from the bok choy, broccoli, and spinach we tried this year. I have six tomato plants in of four different heirloom varieties, and one poblano pepper plant (enough to keep my freezer stocked for a year). I hope to get in a couple of butternut squash plants if I can only find the seeds my mom sent me from one of her squash.

Around the garden I have planted some flowers and a dill to hopefully draw those helpful bugs to keep those not so great pests away this year. That's an experiment - we'll see how that goes. In my herb gardens I also have a grape tomato and cherry tomato plant. I planted those for my almost three-year-old daughter. She picks all the cherry tomatoes out of salads. My husband and I never get any. Hopefully these two tomato plants will help solve that problem.

There are some fairly philosophical reasons why I garden - wanting to eat locally (you don't get any more local than your own backyard); wanting my two children, ages three and thirteen months, to love vegetables and know how they grow; the connection to the land and weather gardening brings; being able to see immediate results from my work. But really, I garden because I love to eat. I believe if it's worth eating, it's gotta taste really good. There is nothing better than a fresh-picked tomato sprinkled with fresh-cut basil with a little olive oil drizzled over top. That's why I bother with the weeds, fire ants, and armadillos.