Garlic

E and I mostly ignored our garlic this year. Apart from adding a top-layer of compost earlier this year, we really haven't done anything (even failing to water through the drought). We were thrilled, then, to find that despite our total neglect, our plants produced scapes in mid-May. We promptly snapped them off and brought them home, where they languished in the fridge for a few weeks.

The garlic scapes eventually made their way to garlic scape pesto. After a quick glance here for the recipe I found a reminder to myself to make roasted scape pesto, so tried that with a small portion of the scapes. I was worried it would taste like dried grass, but instead it's almost chocolatey. I think I still prefer the sharper taste of the raw pesto, but the roasted stuff (on the left below) is very good.


As instructed by various instructions written by garlic farmers, we continued to ignore our plants for the next month or so. We expected to harvest the garlic in August, but our plants started to die around May; the hardnecks were mostly dry by mid-June, and the softnecks gave up the ghost by early July. In accordance with the growers' directions, we pulled up the plants when they were mostly dead - still with a few green leaves left - and lo and behold, we had garlic bulbs! Really, this shouldn't be so amazing, but I am constantly impressed when things "work". Admittedly our garlic is very shrimpy, and we could have done much more with watering and weeding, but for next to no effort, we're definitely happy with what we got.

The garlic is curing away under our back porch. In another week (after about 3-4 weeks of drying total), we'll bring it in, clean it up, and store it in our makeshift root cellar.


I'm afraid I have mostly confused which bunch of garlic is which cultivar (I'm so embarrassed by this fact I can't begin to explain why I am revealing it), but I might be able to figure it out.... This is what I remember (so far):
- I harvested three rows on one day, then two rows on another.
- The first three rows harvested were two hardneck (Music and Fireball!) and one softneck (Inchelium Red!).
- The second two rows harvested were all softneck (German Red and Italian Purple!)
- The second row of hardneck had more purple in the bulb than the first (Fireball!).
- There are two bunches or more of each of the three cultivars harvested the first day.
- There is one bunch each of the two cultivars harvested the second day.
- The second batch of harvested garlic is hung under the porch farthest from the house.
Now to draw my little logic chart...

Clearly we need to repeat this experiment in order to clearly compare the different types of garlic. Unfortunately, like potatoes, garlic has to be on a three year rotation. Mumsy and Paw, we are coming for your space!

Next in this bed: bush beans.

Garlic is planted!

The garlic has finally been planted! The Fox St. garden was in pretty good shape, and is now filled to capacity (and beyond) until next summer/fall. We did not soak the cloves, but did split them the day before planting. They were planted in five rows spaced about 8" apart, with 4" spacing within rows. This is a little tight, but my understanding is that in a crowded bed you get a higher yield although the heads of garlic are smaller. Seems like it would be a wash, but we'll see what happens. At that spacing, 1/2 lb. of seed garlic plants a 15 ft. row very nicely.

Layout (from South to North):
1. Music (gorgeous gorgeous! huge cloves)
2. Fireball (on the small side)
3. Inchelium Red (soft neck)
4. German Red (small)
5. Italian Purple (small)

Still have to find room for the elephant garlic bulbils and the other 1/2 lb of Inchelium Red, and cover that bed with straw, but we're still in okay time, I think!

Potatoes, Potahtoes

After a month of neglect and apathy, I finally got around to cleaning up the Fox St. garden. The dessicated pea plants came out, the grass was pulled out by its roots, the dead potato plants unceremoniously ripped out and tossed away. Then, after another month, I finally returned to the garden to finish the job we had started ages ago: potato harvest! Raking the garden to a depth of about 15 inches and collecting fist-sized purple potatoes was a lovely way to spend the afternoon. I think we need to go through it one more time, as I'm sure I missed many, but the yield was pretty good. Definitely we will need to do potatoes again next year, although they should be spaced a little more closely -- maybe twice the density we planted this year.

The lovely Lulu joined me in the garden, although given her penchant for garden hoses and an abrupt attempt at decapitation of the leash-holder, Lu may stay at home next time.

The haul! I was going to weigh them, but didn't, and now we've used a good number (delicious! gorgeous creamy white inside and fantastic cooked in a pan or in stew) so it's probably not worth bothering. I'm going to guess 20lbs. E will certainly have a better guess.

Not a bad harvest. I've read estimates of 10lbs per lb of seed potatoes, so if my estimate is correct, we're right at that ratio. These were fun, but unfortunately you aren't supposed to save your own potatoes to use for seed next year, and at $5/lb of seed potatoes, we might have to explore other options... So long caribe and purple viking! Hello boring ol' brown potato.

Next in that bed, I'm thinking garlic. Lots and lots of garlic.

Reminders for next year:
- Plant a bit more densely
- Try harvesting with a screen instead of just by rake
- Three-year rotation -- hit up Mavid for potato space
- Look for an alternate source for seed potatoes -- possibly here: http://www.potatogarden.com/prices.html, or here: https://www.mainepotatolady.com/productcart/pc/viewCategories.asp?idCategory=28

Harlequin bugs doin' it in our collards

We stopped by the Druid Hill garden yesterday to take a look and found most of our cold weather crops are done done done for the year. No big surprise there. What was surprising, however, was the massive number of crazy little black and orange bugs covering our collards. After we ripped out the plants, the ground was actually writhing with them. A quick look on the Md Extension website and now we have a name for the little creeps: Harlequin bugs. (E visited the garden today and said, "There's a Harlequin bug orgy in our kale.") And because we can, I offer you a picture of Harlequin bugs mating.
Other exciting things from the Druid Hill garden: For the first time ever, we have successfully(ish) done broccoli and cabbage. E brought home about 3 heads of broccoli a few weeks ago, which he later steamed to perfection. Yesterday we found three heads of cabbage too. Small, sure, barely worth picking perhaps, but still three, count 'em, three cabbages! Next year we'll have to try to get them in a little sooner than mid-April and maybe we'll have a respectable harvest.
The Fox St. garden looks like pure death: the peas have all died back, not surprising given that it's been in the 90s for the last couple weeks. The potatoes and shallots are also giving up the ghost. For these, at least, you aren't supposed to harvest them until a few weeks after the plants have died back, so at least things look all a mess on purpose. Still, we were getting impatient and pulled up a couple plants to see how they're doing. The shallots look great -- it's amazing how much one clove? segment? can generate. Not great bunching, but they're coming along! And the potatoes, oh the potatoes. More fun to dig up than I can possibly tell you. Unfortunately we used a big shovel, a trowel not being handy, and severed quite a few of them. Some are still pretty small, so a few weeks more might do well for them too, but it was extremely fulfilling to yank those out of the ground. I guess we can look forward to some sort of potato and egg dishes in the future.( I think these are the purple vikings.)


Reminders:
- Broccoli and Cabbage Transplants from Meyer Seed are great and cheap
- Get moving in March, lazy bones!
- Use a trowel for potatoes.

Peas and Potatoes

Peas, peas, glorious peas! I am suddenly grateful the peas at the Druid Hill garden were eaten as the Fox St. peas have completely exploded. There are still more than a few plants blooming too, so if we don't destroy them picking the current crop, we might get another good-sized one. If we do demolish them (or decide we simply have had enough peas), they'll come out, and cucumbers and more beans will go in. I guess it's time to really hurry through our canned beans from last year.

And now, on to the potatoes. Neither of us have tried to grow potatoes before, but a few people at the Fox St. garden did last year, and it seemed easy enough. It was also hugely gratifying to pull the plants up too. So much so, in fact, that I have trouble trying not to peek (rip up and ruin, in other words) at our current potatoes. If I remember correctly, we chose the caribe and purple viking potatoes to begin with. According to Landreth's instructions the dirt should be raised around the plants after they are something like 8" tall, then again after they've grown a bit. Apparently this prevents the potatoes from growing out of the dirt. We are not sure if it actually encourages greater potato production by increasing root growth from the now-buried stem, but we're hoping that's true. Depending on how things go this year, we will do the experiment next year and just not bury a plant or two. As of today, the potato plants are huge, and are beginning to flower. I guess in a few weeks we could harvest baby potatoes, but for full-size ones we'll have to wait quite a bit longer. Might have to rip a plant up anyway just to see how they're doing...
While I'm on the subject of dirt, E and I recently realized that extra dirt is hard to find in the city. When you have a yard, you dig up some dirt, throw it on your potatoes, and there you go. When you don't have a yard (or a large enough yard, I guess), you go buy dirt from Home Depot (yeah, actually *pay* for dirt), bring it home in the truck, then dump it on your potatoes. Getting rid of dirt is also surprisingly difficult. So far, no solid plan there, except for some vague idea of a dirt swap between the chickens' bed and the garden. That, and perhaps driving the extra dirt to Mavid's.

Reminders:

• Do the experiment!
• Sweet potatoes
  

Spring gardening

This year we have three garden plots: the long bed in the backyard (maybe 20'x4'), a private plot in the Fox St. community garden (oh, let's say 15'x4'), and after almost two years on a waiting list, a bed in the city garden at Druid Hill Park (a whopping 15'x10'). This gives us a grand total of almost 300 sq.ft., just you know, spread out a bit. Come to think of it, we are also sharing some space at Mavid's too (home to some revolting number of peas and beets at the moment). So four. Four gardens. Seems excessive, but more would be fun.

In preparation for all of this space, we splurged on seeds from Landreth's, including at least four kinds of tomato, and three types of beans, three or four types of squash, three types of cucumber (who knew there were so many?), several eggplant varieties, and a bunch of other stuff. We were generally successful with germination (thanks to E), although I think a few things just simply failed. Many of our seedlings have been transplanted, but there are others still growing and waiting for cold-weather crops to come and free up a little room.

The home garden: So far we have mostly summer crops in there -- a couple cucumbers, tomatoes, squash, zucchini, eggplants, peppers, maybe a few other things. Basil, cilantro, and borage all seem to be doing well on the front porch, and we have so much mint right now that mojitos are definitely going to have to happen soon. (Pics will come eventually)

The Fox Street garden: Peas! Potatoes! Onions! This garden gets the ugly stuff (or at least, the stuff that grows underground or is not colorful enough to be attractive to the neighbors). Last year a lot of people lost their tomatoes and other common vegetables to casual pickers, and the kids pulled up all our carrots, presumably to see if they were done yet. The peas are going strong and I think we'll have a bunch of those within a week. The potatoes have been crazy, but I will leave that until I have a photo of them to share. Fun stuff though.



The Druid Hill garden: As I said above, this is mostly full of cold-weather crops at the moment. Unfortunately something awful ate all of our peas, so they never really made it above three inches. (We ripped those out and did beans instead.) Otherwise we have a couple types of lettuce going, radishes, broccoli and cabbage that will probably do nothing, beets, and chard. Maybe some collards too. We lost our arugula, broccoli rabe, and bok choy after a few warm days when they bolted. Ah well. At least the chickens enjoyed them. We've begun transplanting some summer stuff in the barer spots in this garden too, with more to follow soon.