Can You See a Difference?

Any difference between these photos besides a little less than two months (and a 180 degree flip)?

Okay, so I had to change jeans, but that is the same top, same phone, but different me!

Today marks the official 15 lb day, with another 15 (or 20) to go! I need to figure out how to treat myself for a halfway mark.

Garlic Harvest Time!

Well, I just came back from a two week medical emergency trip (everything is okay now) and had good friends taking care of the garden. Everything in the garden was quite happy and growing away. Before I left the rest of the garlic was almost ready to pick, but not quite, so when I got back it was really ready to be plucked!

All told there are about 30 bulbs, including some that fell off of their stems, and one that I ...um...dug into. oops. I dug them up yesterday afternoon and let them sit on the ground overnight. They did get rained on a bit, but not enough to cause any problems. Today I cleaned them up and braided them. Cleaning just involved removing the clinging dirt and any loose skins, then tearing/cutting off the roots to prevent space for things to grow and moisture to collect.  Braiding is occasionally hard to start, but easy once you get going. One word of warning: it is easy to get garlic splinters if you are not careful when braiding--don't slide your hand down the stems and leaves if you can help it. Learn from my fail.

Anyway, here is a photo of the newly braided garlic!

And another one

From here they are going to be hung in my pantry to cure and be eaten.  I may mash up some with olive oil and some salt and keep it in the fridge as instant garlic, but I have to find motivation and time for that.  

One thing I did notice is that some of my garlic is already greenish blue. Apparently I have sulfur/copper enough to turn the skins green, but that will not affect the taste at all. This particular variety also has purple skins at times, so I am wondering if the blue/green tinge is related to that. 

Happy garlic munching!

Giant Sunflowers are Indeed Giant

Well this post is going to be quick due to a host of travel and medical issues in the family. On a good note, the garden is being taken care of by awesome friends, even when I am three states away from home.

So those sunflowers from last post? Yeah, they grew. A lot.

The roof there is 8 feet high at the bottom edge.

Here is another picture taken last week of the monsters.

So just remember that sunflowers labeled "giant" will be huge indeed. I can only wait to see how large the heads get when they ripen! (The last post's photos were taken May 29th, so that is how tall they have grown in less than a month.)

Any garden surprises for you?

First Harvest!

It is now almost the end of May and I have gotten some of the first produce of the spring! I wasn't expecting to get anything out of it other than some lettuce until later next month, but there were string beans were waiting for me in the garden.

The sunflowers (which are supposed to be giants) are indeed tall--about five feet tall at the moment. I now know for future use that they really keep the area around them cool. I was relaxing in their shade during the 95 degree weather, and it was quite cool--so was the ground beneath the leaves. These particular sunflowers also seem to be exceptionally wind resistant thanks to their thick stems, which are almost an inch and a half thick!


I also found out that I have a volunteer squash plant that seems to be a pattypan type and is loaded with baby squash. I can't wait to have fresh summer squash again, but now I may end up with too much thanks to the extra plant. Oh the woes of a garden! (Insert sarcasm here)

The lettuce is ripe for the picking and is happily growing away. I should have planted more of it in with the sunflowers, but alas, most of it is in almost full sun. We shall see how long it takes the lettuce to go bitter in the heat. I also have baby spinach plants that are replacing the few winter-holdover plants that are bolting/bolted. 

The garlic is nearing ripe--at least for the softneck grocery-store variety I planted. The hardneck bulbs won't be ready till at least late June. I picked some of the bulbs from each that were crowded/ripe and boy are they strong! My kitchen smells of garlic curing in the windowsill. (Normally people leave them outside for a few days to cure, but the temperatures vary so much here that I cure them inside by hanging them)

The potatoes are in need of straw to pile over the existing plants (so I get more taters growing in the straw as well as the soil), but I haven't gotten around to buying the straw yet. Oops. 


Nothing else to report, so I am off for now!

Spring Garden, and..."What the heck!"

When I moved into my house last year I fell in love with the garden space it has, and the two big cottonwoods that give partial shade to some of the garden. (Though have been hating the pollen from those cottonwoods for the past two weeks)

There are five beds in my garden. Three of them have wonderful soil, one is okay clay/sand, and the final bed is pretty much clay concrete. Of the five beds, two are currently in use, one mid-way through tilling and already sprouting up taters, and one growing field peas (and weeds) to try and fix the poor clay soil that is there. The last bed is fallow at the moment and will become a summer/fall garden plot once I get the chance to plan it out. All of them are watered using drip hoses (ye olde basic black sponge hoses). The beds are just the right length to run a hose all around the edge of the bed and then up the middle.

Now, on to each bed in turn.

The first has:

• wintered garlic (a little over a foot tall now), 
• spinach (Bloomsdale Longstanding--just planted, and three plants overwintered) 
• sunflowers (Mongolian Giant)
• bush beans (I think they are Blue Lake, but I don't really remember)
• A few carrots (Nantes hold-overs from winter)
• Cucumbers (Lemon)

Adding to that list will be tomatoes (Cherokee Purple and Siberian), Peppers (California Wonder Bell and Big Jim), and some corn (saved from last year) to provide a little more shade. The transplants are only about three inches tall right now and are really fragile--I repotted them into bigger containers, but I want them more wind resistant (not to mention less likely to freeze) before I plant them outside. (Note that the hose is not in my standard configuration due to fail on my part)

The second bed as it stands right now has:

• Corn (Posole)
• Pole Beans (Rattlesnake Snap)
• Bush Beans (Blue lake I think)
• Sunflowers (Mongolian Giant)
• Beets (Bull's Blood--planted late, but we will see if they grow)
• Cucumber (Pickling)

I am not sure what I will plant in the small section between the beets and the peas, but I think there will be room for some melons or squash and still have room for the plants to sprawl. (On the note of watering, this bed you can see the end of the buried watering hose--that keeps the water from evaporating)

Bed number three: Po Ta Toes.

Last year I pretty much had to pick-axe my way through the dirt in the potato bed. After many hours of tilling, lots of adding straw, and more tilling, I planted basic Yukon Gold potatoes and kept them covered with straw as they grew. After a good crop last year, I decided that I would give the soil a year to rest--but nature has other ideas.

This morning I went out to till the ground out there and found quite a few potatoes that were sprouting and ready to start more taters. Not only that but the soil was no longer just hard-packed clay. Instead of the concrete-like substance from last year, I now have pretty darn good soil. Not great, but definitely more happy than I ever though that it would be. The potatoes, along with the straw, water, and worms seem to have done their jobs!  Anyway, I remembered a bag of organic potatoes that was trying to sprout in my pantry. Those little taters are now all cut up and drying out a bit before I plant them out with their kin in the tater plot sometime later today or tomorrow.

Here is a short rant on potatoes--seed potatoes are best, but organic works well too. Some people refuse to plant anything except seed potatoes due to risks of transferring diseases to new soils. I am a little hesitant to pay $15/lb plus shipping just to get $3 of potatoes at home. Instead, I go to either my local farmer's market and buy from the nice people there, or I pick up a big bag of organic taters from the supermarket. Neither of these are sprayed with any kind of anti-rooting hormones, and they have not had to be sprayed to within an inch of their lives to keep root rot out of them. Both grow incredibly well, with relatively low risk. If you positively want to be safe, go with the seed potatoes, otherwise organic works quite well.

Alrighty, rant finished. Back to the beds.

Bed four--that bastard clay square

 This bed has issues. It is square (not a problem), small (meh), being invaded by Trumpet Vine (I HATE that plant), and has about 100% hard-packed clay. Last year I planted viny things in it and the plants flourished. The soil did not. I even made sure to add in some compost and organic matter. No love. There just was not enough plant matter and deep roots to aerate the soil. While the plants grew very well, they also took out more nutrients from an already depleted soil. Dang.

Now I need to find a way to fix all the problems--and that involves good old rotting plant matter. I picked up some seed for Field Peas to try to get some Nitrogen back into the soil as well as to break of the clay.  Once the peas (or the weeds that are growing with them) are mature but not seeding, I will till all of the greenery into the soil and let it sit. Every few days I can spray it with water, and VOILA! there should be much better soil next year. Should. I hope. I doubt that I will plant anything there judging by the state of the soil right now, but I may end up with some melons there, since the plants really love that area.

Finally, bed five--all fallow

I am leaving this bed fallow for the first part of the season and plan on planting it later on with summer/fall goodies and letting one other bed have a break. Last year this bed had lots of beets and garlic, so it is not too taxed, but I still don't need quite that many plants to tend right now. 

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Now for a quick information session named "What is THAT?!"

 

So, what is this little cocoon of goodness that attached itself to my vines?

The answer: A Praying Mantis Cocoon

I absolutely was amazed at how many of these little cocoons were all over my front porch area. I love praying mantises because they eat almost every bad bug in my garden that I can think of, and leave the good bugs (like ladybugs) alone.  If you see any of these hard little brown things hanging from your siding, overhang, plants, etc, make sure to leave them alone. Eventually these will turn into pest-eating machines! (Until then they sorta look like turds...)

Fun with 4-wheeling

Well now I should actually start the photo blogging that I started this up for.

I think we start back in April with the trip up and over the Magdalena mountains that my man and a few friends went on. I do not have any editing software besides basic cropping and color adjustments, so these are all cropped/straight out of the camera.

This is a view from the valley we started in.

And one overlooking another valley.

And finally up and over the other side of the valley.

Yes I have tons of other photos... but I am just getting into the swing of things, so we will start slow. It was a great trip and I was happy to get out and take the Jeep out and toss it into low gear for a while. I didn't manage to get the Jeep stuck enough to need anything more than a few moved rocks to get unstuck... sad really.

Next up on the blog will be photo fun in Atlanta from when I went this past May for a conference and took a stop at the Aquarium and Coka-Cola museum.