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!