Floppy Garlic
Late last week my garlic flopped.
A heavy rain and a little wind toppled most of the big bed of softneck garlic- it looked like a critter cut through the middle of the bed.
Some suggest it is time to harvest when most of the garlic has flopped; this is a little earlier than I was expecting so I will lift a few and check them out.
More to follow.
Thank you
Toiling in your garden…
Enjoying time with your family…
Regardless of how you might be spending this Memorial Day weekend, please don’t forget.
This is actually a Veterans Day speech but given the controversy of the conflicts of the last decade it seems most fitting for today.
If I were called upon, would I have risen to the occasion?
Would you have?
For those who did, and those who are, and those who will,
thank you.
Shallots, clay and green garlic…
As I was taking a new picture of a nice shallot flower …
…I noticed that the shallot cluster in the tip of one the same triangular bed had withered – that is the leaves had started to die back. I haven’t grown shallots before but this is what I am expecting when the whole lot of them are ready for harvest. In this case I was more concerned with a potential disease issue since the one cluster was the only one that had browned and died back.
The bed is one of my laziest; I put it in on a whim before I started in earnest on the ones behind the fence. It has a clay based soil mix in it- the clay plus some organic matter and vermiculite worked in. The serious wave of storms this spring clogged the downspout near the bed and several waterfalls dumped into it before I could address the issue.
Q: Does clay + waterfalls = rotted shallots?
A: Yes
The one clump was totally rotted; I noticed that tip of the bed was mostly clay as compared to the rest. Apparently I didn’t mix it in quite as well as I thought…..
I used this as an excuse to pull the next clump – I figured I’d eat them like green onions or green garlic.
Not bad:
Later I peeled on down to add to a stir fry- it was very mild but had a great flavor.. you can see the classic shallot shape developing in the halves.
Speaking of green garlic…. The plate behind contains a green onion and some delicious green garlic- basically a freshly pulled immature bulb, used before the cloves completely develop and the skins dry. I WILL plant extra to harvest this way next year…
Sliced:
Google “green garlic” and salivate…
Beans vs Potatoes
Funny thing about garden plans and great ideas- sometimes they have complications that aren’t expected, especially when one tries to squeeze things in as tightly as possible.
Example:
My redesigned pole bean scheme is planted and set up; it shares the new long bed with a row of russet potatoes. I think it will look great assuming I can convince the beans to climb the bamboo instead of the potatoes.
The issue is the yard is shaded in the morning and the beans reside in one row on the east side of this bed. Their first sun is around noon and is pretty close to directly overhead at that point.
Well the potatoes on the west side of the same bed are a pretty tall already and the newly sprouted beans tend to follow the sun west as the afternoon progresses. By the evening they are leaning into and beginning to grab the leggy russets. I’ve been redirecting them before the start wrapping and am fairly confident this issue will go away once the beans get a purchase on the bamboo; in the meantime it is just another reason to piddle around in the back with nobody bothering me. 😉
Side view facing south down the bed:
This flash shot at dusk highlights the bamboo trellis; it is 8′ tall, but by July the vines will be overrunning the top.
Anyway, that’s what’s up with bean trellis #1 in 2011.
Vegetable Gardening
Sometimes it’s just a guy thing.
Elephant Garlic
Is big
(But it still can’t operate a smartphone.)
Satan’s Minions
Seriously……..
I have two who are dumbly relentless this year. They don’t eat a thing (yet…. give them time). They just pull up seedlings and lay them in the sun to wither. Yes, including four pepper plants, one even from a pot.
Digression starts here:
Like most states, North Carolina has a state mammal….. the grey squirrel. I guess some other states had already claimed the skunk, weasel, possum and Norwegian rat. (Is their state bird the starling?) I am now so proud of my own Georgia, as we have declared our state mammal the “Right Whale”. Don’t believe me? check it out yourself here.
How did states select these “official” species? I wonder if it was with a draft system life the NFL’s? If so who got to pick first? If you got last pick in reptiles, does that insure you a higher spot in the amphibian round?
Digression ends here
Actually, I need to add a couple of new ones to the squirrel army, so it is just as well that these are getting comfortable.
Don’t you agree?
(insert diabolical laughter)
Is it summer or spring?
Three days at 90 degrees are probably going to end spring for me sooner rather than later.
For me spring ends when all the winter / cool weather plantings are gone or going to seed. Summer begins when the tomatoes are in and starting to lean on their cages a bit.
Right now the garden is in both and it isn’t really the nicest looking phase of the year.
I’m still harvesting sugar snap peas although I’ve run out of trellis:
From the other side you catch the split personality (the middle bed) – tomatoes coming up behind the peas, spinach going to seed, lettuce popping out from under the cages at the end of the bed.
The potato boxes are filled with healthy plants growing an inch a day, even showing a bud or two:
The weedy looking stuff hanging out of the bed in front of them is last fall’s arugula, with pods getting close to time for seed harvest:
Out of the same bed are a couple of toppled over french breakfast radishes also plump with seeds:
Behind the radishes, the chard that didn’t get eaten over the inter or spring is no worse for the wear, but it is surrounded by the seed stalks of spinach seeding out.
The joi choi is amazingly showing no sign of going to seed and the romaine in front is looking healthy
You can see the tip of the elephant garlic scape in the picture above, from the other side you get the full view (I decided to let one of them flower just to see what it looked like).
I’m also finding more tomato volunteers all over the place; the tommy toe avalanche last year pretty much insures I’ll be weeding them all summer.
The rainbow chard up in the front beds is finally beginning to show its colors, or at least when the evening sun is hitting it:
That’s all……
Bleached Okra and Blue Corn….
This year I decided to add some okra to mix; “Clemson Spineless” was the type selected.
(Hmm. Spineless… Clemson…. funny word association don’t your think Mr C?)
I had read some complaints about slow germination, a week or two even. When I saw the hard little seeds it didn’t surprise me as much.
In Walter Reeves’ “Guide to Georgia Vegetable Gardening”, he wrote of a strange sounding “old timer’s” trick to get reliable germination within 24 hours:
Soak the seeds in pure chlorine bleach for exactly 5 minutes, no more, no less.
Rinse in clean water exactly 3 times.
Plant.
It sounded like pure BS to me, so naturally I had to try it.
Damned if it didn’t work- they had all germinated by the next evening.
I followed the directions above with a pinch of seeds and planted them. I didn’t want 2 dozen plants, just a handful in the tiny patch I scratched out near the fence. However, I figured the bleach would ruin most of them so that’s about how many total I planted in a space that should only hold a couple or four plants.
OK guys, the weakest three of you in each spot get thinned in a few days:
Last year I ordered some heirloom mini corn – “Blue Jade” from Seed Savers Exchange
I had poor germination and the experiment was a failure. I found a second package of these from last year and figured I had nothing to lose. After soaking them for an hour or so I planted them-
After a year on the shelf, nearly 100% germination a couple days later.
These weren’t stored under any particularly good conditions either. Go figure.
Behind cohutt's fence 