September Photos

 I have about half of the garlic processed while the other half is still hanging in the rafters.

 This was the first and largest zucchini that I saved for seed.

I let it sit on the shelf for 2 weeks and all of the white turned a bright yellow.

The aging after harvesting gives the seeds time to plump-up.

 I made garlic cookies for the first time this year! 

They have a complex taste both sweet & garlicky at the same time.

 On the last weekend of the month, I made my crock pot mushroom soup.

I began harvesting apples on 9/28/13. There're 20 pounds pictured here.

August Zucchini, Yellow Squash & Cucumbers

This summer has been very good for the summer squashes. I've had an abundance of zucchini and yellow squash.  

 This yellow crook-neck variety is prolific this season!

 I made my first zucchini breads on August 25, 2013.

With all of the bridge work going on this year, all of the ground hogs are gone!!!

This little rabbit is the only wildlife that I have seen all summer.

:)

July 2013

I harvested the red shallots in mid-July. These were the spring-type of variety, I've since ordered a fall planting variety which will be planted in October.

June = Garlic Scapes, Strawberries and Firewood

The garlic scapes are ready to pick around the last week of June.

I've also been harvesting small dinner amounts of Oregano.

I'm very impressed with Gurney's Whopper strawberries. 

This is only their first season and I've gotten 2 quarts so far.

Bannish Lumber always calls in the last week of June. 

I ordered 2 cords this year and I still have 2 cords from last year.

May Post

May is all about transplanting and sticking all of the tomatoes, peppers, herbs and direct seeded cukes & squash into the greenhouse for a tropical atmosphere.

The extreme heat & humitity will jump-start all of the above mentioned plants and make them ready for mid-June and early July garden set-outs.

April 2013

This has been a warm and dry April as compared to most. I'm not complaining though! I have gotten seeds planted very early in the season for the first time ever, as well as getting all of my spring plantings of yellow onions and red shallots into the ground.

I also planted some new things like Salsify, Rutabaga, Parsnip, and Beets.

Seeds Started

Bridge work has commenced in front of my house so this season will be challenging. Last week the workers moved my beloved greenhouse from out front to out back! The 24 foot tomato table garden was also dismantled and moved next to the greenhouse.

The good news is that they purposely kept the greenhouse pointed in the same direction which maximizes sunlight and I can use it as it is temporarily resting on blocks.

The workers were also nice enough to pull the huge remaining willow tree (that fell during tropical storm Irene in 2011) away from its precarious perch dangling over the brook. They even cut it up into logs that I will work on once the weather warms up.

Speaking of firewood, the tree guys were nice enough to let me keep these logs that were cut along the areas of the two bridges being rebuilt. It's a few years worth easily!

All of the tomato seeds are started. These are some of my 2010 saved seeds from a few of my favorite varieties: Better Boy, Campari, Dad's Compost, Delicious, Orange Roma and Taxi. I ordered new hybrids from Totally Tomatoes strictly based on their extreme disease resistance: Bella Rosa, Celebrity, Charger, Goliath and multi-color Cherry (free gift with my order).

Over here, I have my hot peppers and herbs planted. The herbs are: Agrimony, Chinese Jujube, Lemon Basil, Lime Basil, and Rosemary. I also got some rare seeds (10) of Jiaogulan (Gynostemma pentaphyllum) which I hope to grow for tea. The peppers are: Ancho Grande and Beaver Dam - both ordered on Amazon from Seeds Direct. I ordered peppers from Totally Tomatoes: Biggie Chile and Cayenne Purple (free gift).

I decided to use 3 inch cells to start my onions this season. I simply added seeds by sprinkling them haphazardly about 20 seeds per cell and sprayed them with water and barely covered them with soil. My attempt at growing onions in 2012 failed - mainly because I was going about it very wrong from the beginning. Last year I grew them under the fluorescent lights along with the tomatoes and peppers - BIG MISTAKE! Onions (especially northern varieties) are all about sunlight and day length. My poor onions of 2012 must have been very confused... 2013's onions will be exposed only to sunlight.

March is winding down and soon all of this snow will be history. The sun is notably stronger, more intense now and it's only going to get better in April.
:)

Garlic and Shallots

February is the right time to order new varieties of garlic. As of 2013, I have the following:

California Early

Chopaka Mountain

German Extra Hearty

German Red

Inchelium Red

Japanese Porcelain

Musik

Red Grain

Romanian Red

Siberian

Silver Rose

I'm up to 11 different garlic varieties as of this season and will expand to 21 in 2014. Growing garlic takes a bit of optimism; you have to envision the future. The garlic I order in February, 2013 won't be delivered until early October, 2013 for the fall planting. These new varieties will sprout in early April, 2014.

My favorite place to order garlic is Filaree Garlic Farm located in Okanogan, Washington. This year I have 10 more varieties ordered:

Ajo Rojo

Asian Tempest

Bogatyr

Chinese Purple

Creole Red

Korean Mountain

Lithuanian Purple

Oregon Blue

Skuri

Xian

-------------------------------------------

February is also a great time to order shallots. I decided to go with Gurney's Seed & Nursery this season and ordered 2 pints (approximately 140). Each individual shallot that I plant will yield 3 to 6 more in late summer; so if I get a conservative average yield of 4 x 140 = 560! 

I also ordered Gurney's Whopper Strawberry plants (50) and will dedicate one of the mesa gardens to be exclusively for these berries. It should prove to be an interesting experiment.

For some strange reason, my Amaryllis loves to bloom in late February - and this year, it has a triple flower stalk which should be full of many blooms into the first couple of weeks in March.

:)

Indoors Stuff

January finds me indoors as much as possible. I read all of the seed catalogs and begin my first orders in mid-January. So far, I've ordered from two websites: Totally Tomatoes & Richter's. I was pleasantly surprised at how fast both seed companies filled my orders. I received both orders in the last week of January, 2013.

This year, I've decided to buy tomato varieties that a highly disease resistant because I'm sick of watching my heirloom plants get clobbered by splotches, rots, and blights just when they peak in late July and August.

I'm also going to focus more on herbs this season. The mesa gardens seem to be the optimum location for working with herbs. Of course, this is all hypothetical - I'll see how it goes this time around.

The kitties sleep blissfully on the couch in front of the TV, basking in the wonderful warmth set forth from the wood stove that cheerfully burns the hardwoods throughout the bone-chilling January freezing nights.

A Long Winters Nap

December was mild at first and pretty much snow-free up until the last week. About an inch of snow fell on Christmas Eve and this is what the garlic garden looked like on Christmas Day.

It appears as if the garlic is all snuggled in beds of straw, covered in a blanket of snow and resting blissfully for a long winters nap. Additional snow will only further help as extra insulation from temperature fluctuations in the soil.

The bountiful herb garden is in dormancy right now. And although I made late season strides to harvest the mints and oregano, I'm already running out! I should have started harvesting the oregano in July once every two weeks because it's the first herb that I tend to run out of in December due to my spaghetti sauce addiction. Damn.

Speaking of dormant, the greenhouse solemnly sits quietly under its own blanket of snow. No sunshine will grace the front windows until late January due to the surrounding mountains. It too sleeps.

The mesa gardens are covered with almost a foot of snow as of December 29th. Good news about the snow is that I can start feeding the birds without worrying about Mrs. Bear and Mr. Raccoon raiding and destroying the feeders. So while the garlic, greenhouse and mesas are asleep, the birds are awake and giving life to an otherwise lifeless landscape.

All Garlic Has Been Planted!

All of the bunches of German Extra Hearty garlic (10 stalks each) 

that have been hanging in the rafters

since early August were taken down on November 3, 2012.

The hardest part about raising garlic is just before the new planting goes in.

Each stalk needs to be cut with pruning sheers about an inch above the bulb.

Then the roots need to be cut with scissors, all the while 

removing the outer dried dirt and outer skins. 

The result is a drastic improvement in appearance and 

it now resembles what you would buy at the supermarket.

There were 16 bundles kept separate for planting in November,

for a total of 160 bulbs pictured in the box above.

Believe it or not, this all that I would have to plant to get the same 

160 bulbs that you saw hanging in the rafters in August.

Since each bulb has 4 cloves, I only need 40 bulbs 

out of the 160 to match last year's total harvest!

However, not all of the 160 bulbs are worthy of going into the garden.

These are the smallest of the lot which are for my kitchen!

On November 4, 2012, I did final rotor-tilling(s) for the season.

 I spent about an hour braking-up all of the garlic 

bulbs into cloves for today's planting.

I almost ran out of room... I had 408 cloves to plant and it 

took up a lot of space!

I outlined my impromptu, L-shaped row in the photo. 

The row is 50 feet long with 5 cloves in width.

Not quite the 500 I was hoping to plant, but with over 200 

more of the 10 other varieties, I'm looking at a very busy season in 2013!

October Comes and Goes

I began planting the new varieties of garlic back on October 21, 2012. 

I've added 7 more this year and grew out 3 new one's from the 2011 planting

The 10 new varieties are listed below:

California Early

Chopaka Mountain

German Red

Inchelium Red

Japanese Porcelain

Musik

Red Grain

Romanian Red

Siberian

Silver Rose

I've never planted garlic in this section of garden before. 

I planted sweet clover as a spring cover crop and tilled it in late October.

I start out small with only about 3 bulbs per variety. 

The first year will only allow me to plant 1 to 2 dozen cloves depending on the variety.

What fascinates me is the process of "growing out" each type of garlic. 

The yields increase exponentially over  the years:

Year 1 = 12

Year 2 = 48

Year 3 = 192

Year 4 = 768

Year 5 = 3,072

I am in year 4 with my German Extra Hearty.

It's still hanging from the rafters over the firewood.

I plan to select 500 of the largest cloves for planting this year.

11 varieties of garlic and adding more each season!