GARLIC.. I see garlic

The garlic is up. All those little bits of green are garlic plants. Pooka saw the plants and started singing "Yay, the garlic is up, I will not need to eat grocery store garlic." over and over until Daddy got annoyed.

Garlic appears

Now to hope for big bulbs of garlic.

What to do

So due to our own fault, the last of the garlic was about done. Now, this may not of been a problem had we left it in the garage or gotten it to the basement like we meant to. Warm kitchen counters are not the best place to store garlic, and this is why we know it our fault.

The end of the garlic

Some of the garlic was not salvageable. Not much, fortunately, but there were a few cloves we just gave up on. The rest had started to sprout. What does one do with garlic that has begun to grow?

The garlic that sprouted

Why plant it of course, I found a small section of the garlic bed that I hope does not have anything already in it, and I randomly placed garlic in it. To do this, I went out when we had a fairly good bit of snow, but the ground was mostly thawed. Pooka didn't want to help since it was rather cold that day. I just did the run out, plant and run back in method. Which is also why it was done randomly because it was too cold to be out there. I did wonder what cars thought of this crazy lady digging in the snow.

Just the place the garlic was put, no pictures of the process

When I ran out of room there, I took a spot in the herb bed. I don't know how that spot will work, but we will try it. It means probably one less herb plant, but I think the experiment of will the garlic grow is worth it. Ideally, this should work perfectly since you can take your largest bulbs and replant them so you never buy more garlic. However, since we put them in late, we are crossing our fingers to see if this works. If it does, it means we have a place for sprouted garlic. Time to let the experiment begin and just wait. 

This set is separate to see how well it does. 

Almost gone

Over the summer, we harvested the garlic. And the garlic was good. Daddy said more than once we would never need to buy garlic again. I laughed at him and Pooka wanted to see what other colors we could grow. All told, we pulled in 102 bulbs of garlic weighing in at 121.5 oz. Not a bad haul considering our investment. Our garage smelled of garlic for months as it hung out their drying.

The largest garlic harvest of multiples

Fast forward to late December and the weather got colder, I knew our garlic supply was getting smaller, but the joy and ease of "Oh, I need some garlic, let me go grab one" was way too easy. However as the weather started going to that "let's try sub-zero." Daddy and I decided to bring in the last of the garlic. What you see below is the last lb of garlic. I will admit that having barely made it to Jan I was sad since it meant we would probably have to buy the grocery store stuff for a few months. Pooka actually said "NO, I don't want grocery store garlic, it tastes funny." 

The last of the garlic

Moral of this story, plant more garlic. Let us hope next year's harvest does better.

Begining of September pictures

 I will fully admit we have been a bit busy. In fact, we have been swamped with real life. I completely forgot the first of the month pictures for August. This just means that there will be more of a noticeable difference in the garden. That's it, I wanted to show more of a difference.

Pooka's pollinator garden

Pooka's polinator garden is filling out. The plant I left there not knowing if it was a weed or a plant was actully milkweed, so its a good thing I left it. I will admit I need to weed it bit, but its filled out on one side. A few of the last plants we put in didn't seem to do well, so we will wait till next spring and if they do not come back (Since everything in there is a perennial) then we will replace them. Pooka and her friend K go play in her little flower bed daily and pick flowers for butterflies or the birds. Even if it adds more work, its been worth it to see the girls have so much fun.

Garlic bed

The garlic was pulled in July and we replaced it with annual herbs and veggies again this year. We have dill (that is going to seed) celery, parsley and Pooka's black eyed susan sitting in the corner. The living chair has done much better in this spot, however, I think I will need to get another pot of mint to really fill it out for next year. However, in a few weeks we will rip out all of these plants and plant next years garlic. Keeping other plants in this bed after the garlic has been pulled also keeps the weeds down.

Front bed

 The explosion that is the herb bed is out of hand. I dry and I dry herbs, and I cannot keep up. The tarrogon will be divided next spring and sent to new homes, and I will probably get rid of all but one thyme plant. With all the wet weather this year we didn't water as much, and I noticed the top tier was dying from lack of water. This means next year it either needs to be hardier OR I need to remember to water it even when its been raining. One or the other.

Peppers and basil

All of the basil plants are quite happy having flowered completely. Its gotten to the point you can't pull the flowers off. Pooka and I did not put as much energy into that this year and you can tell. The plants still did well, but they are a bit spindly and starting to die back a bit. At least we got our basil jelly this year. More on that another day. The chinese 5 color peppers AKA Death peppers are very happy in their spot. We had to stake them up so they didn't fall over with all their bounty. Daddy is a very happy man as we are drying our own hot pepper flakes and hes begun his talk of siracha-cha again.

Sunflowers

The sunflowers are doing very well. We did have a couple that fell over due to being too big, but for the most part, they do not seem to mind having been started straight into the ground. However, not all of the seeds seemed to start, and the plants themselves do seem to be much further behind in producing seeds. This was our last year of using store bought seeds so I am hoping they will produce enough seeds to continue for next year. I do still have some seeds from last year, but I know Pooka loves being able to save her seeds and have Pooka sunflowers. The leaves on the first sunflower are bigger than not only mine or Pooka's hands, but Daddy's as well. Hopefully we can continue saving at least a few seeds.

Corner of nothing

 This is a very sad picture. It had been raining so I pulled everything off the corner stand and put them on the table to get watered. As you can see, the musculin lettuce bolted horrible and our squash in this pot is still fairly small. It doesn't seem to be doing well. The rainbow char just needed a good water. As pretty as char is, we don't seem to eat it, so it will probably be pulled from the garden never to be seen again. We don't plant for pretty around here. Pooka's humming bird hanger is doing well. The flowers just keep getting bigger, however, the cold weather is causing it some issues since it does not have any ground to keep it warm. The lemon tree has a few more lemons about to finish riping and some new ones starting. Although it may need a bigger pot next year.

Long view of the messy deck

Oh the mess that is my back deck. We have lettuce and spinach that has bolted, the tomatoes on the end of the deck by the table have decided to eat the chairs. No one can say I only show the pretty shots. The blueberry bushes and lilac are doing well in their little pots, Although Audrey the morning glory never did do well this year. We got a couple of flowers, but for the most part it has just been a few leaves. I will admit this area looks better today then when I took these pictures at the begining of the month because I started to clear out most of the dead/dying plants for fall. You can't really see from this view, but the lime tree actually has limes that are getting bigger on it, so now I wait and see if we have fresh limes at Christmas.

Onion bed

 As you can tell, 99% of our onions have been harvested. I should of planted something here, but there are a few bulbs we missed. I just recently heard of a variety of onion I can plant in the fall. Our onion crop is generally fairly small onions and we need to expand this crop. I am hoping the fall variety (once I order them) will help with that. These guys will be put in the same bed for 2 years just so I can see if it works and how well. This is where Pooka yells "FOR SCIENCE" . We admit we are learning new things and experimenting on what works.

Brandywine, Rainbow cherry and fireball tomatoes

Tomatoes and more tomatoes. These are the brandywine, fireball and rainbow cherry tomatoes. I swear you should start calling Pooka Dr. Mendel. Somehow in this section grows what we are calling the Pooka tomato which is a purple/black roma. I didn't plant anything like that in the entire yard, so I have no idea where it is coming from. Also, we have fallen in love with the Brandywine tomato. Its a nice meaty tomato but we have pulled some off the plant that are a lb a piece. While it is more a paste tomato, we have used it as slicer, and are considering getting rid of all the Beefsteaks once we run out of seeds.

Tomatoes, Basil, Carnival, long sweets and cubanelle peppers

The tomatoes are rather imposing and eating my deck. The pea plants were eaten by the tomatoes and pulled fairly early. The basil has held its own, but is still fairly small. We still cannot grow a bell pepper to save our lives. I don't know what it is, but they never seem to produce. The long sweets are loving this spot, as are the cubanelle peppers. But the bell peppers we may just give up on for our friendly peppers. The purple peas are very dead in this picture, and should of been ripped out by now. They did not restart when I reseeded them.

Beefsteak, Roma and Blueberry tomatoes with pots

The rest of the tomato jungle. I have had a couple of tomato leaves get singed by the grill, but all in all the tomatoes like this spot. I don't think this is the tomatoes favorite spot, but it works. The beefsteak and romas are doing well but the blueberry tomatoes are exploding, and Pooka loves all the colors they come in. I guess its another time to call her Dr. Mendel since they have grown to multiple colors. We have 2 little watermelons growing in the pots and the raspberries are doing well.

Failure

Another year, another failure with corn. It seemed to be doing well in the pot and then a windstorm came through and it was done. I think next year we will try this in a small section of the yard. But unless something changes, I will not be buying more seeds of it. So we have until this packet of seeds dies to figure out what we are doing wrong. Where we live, you go a couple miles in almost any direction and all you see is corn. Really makes you wonder what we are doing wrong we can't grow it around here.

Tomatoillos

 The tomatillos are doing wonderfully. We are getting a ton to cook with. However, the purple ones only turn purple when they are left on the plant after they split their lantern. They don't seem to last on the plant long enough to do so. This is another plant that will be sticking around, and we may increase what we are planting of it. We will have to see how much room is in the garden next year.

Hot Peppers and Eggplant

The hot peppers and eggplants are doing well. After they got big enough to hold off mr. Bunny. Daddy loves this variety of jalapeno since it grows a large amount very quickly. However, they have been very mild this year (As well as the poblanos). Hot peppers do require hot dry weather to get hotter peppers that we just haven't had. The poblanos make a good substitute for green peppers in most of our dishes, so they will be sticking around for a long time.

Broccoli and Cucumbers

The broccolli has done well. The geometric broccoli is still not producing (So much for that one) but the standard broccoli has done well, even if every single broccoli plant has decided to fall over. I should stake them up, but for now they are okay where they are at. The cucumbers had done okay. They did loads better than last year but not as well as the first year. This location they get some sort of pest that ate just the skin off the cucumbers, but if you peeled them they were fine and maybe some squash beetles because the plant is suddenly dying back. But in the end, we got our cucumbers for lunches and salads and some pickles so we are happy.

Like every year, we have some successes and some failures. But that is what happens in science. Not everything works the way you think, so you keep trying until you figure out what does work.

Replacing the rose bush

Sometimes, things just do not work out. No matter how much love and hope and emotion is in them.  When Aunt S and I went and collected a rosebush from my grandmothers, we had to fight to get the bush. The bush was too happy where my grandmother had planted it and we didn't have enough of a root system. I had feared it wouldn't make it, and when our nursery was doing a 50% off sale, I knew it was time to accept that the bush didn't want to be here without my grandmother. I think I took this news harder than either child. Pooka loved its yellow and pink roses that spoke highly of my grandmother's love of flair. Brother really hadn't invested in it because it was not what he needed. Me well, I hurt worst because in a way I felt I had not only failed her in my inability to keep it alive, but I had failed the children in trying to give them their own little place to remember her. I wanted to give them something to remember her by. 

This is the bush

I finally had to admit defeat when the entire bush would break when it was bent. When I went to remove the bush, I grabbed the base and just yanked. The entire thing just came right out and when I looked at the roots, no new ones had even started. It wasn't going to make it even if I had given it another year.

the new rose

The nursery was doing a 50% off sale, and I took the kids to pick out their new great grandma rose. Pooka wanted something very bright and colorful for great grandma. Brother didn't want to be involved. He has handled this whole situation in his own way and having a rose didn't matter to him. He did love the name of a "Yellow brick rose". He thought great grandma would like that since she had always love children's movies. I liked the fact it was yellow and spoke to her love of COLOR and flair (I sometimes think this is where Pooka got her sense of style).

Proof the rose never took

This is the hole after I yanked the old bush out. I didn't remember planting garlic over there, but apparently I had. You can see how the dirt is barely disturbed from where I pulled the old plant out. As I dug out a new hole, Pooka did wonder if I would find her letter to great grandma. I said that I didn't want to find it since it had been given to her and we shouldn't take it back. She understood that but it did tell me she was handling this like a kid and that she was doing okay with everything.

Bonus garlic

I did take the chance to remove the bonus garlic. The more I thought about it the more I almost remember planting some test garlic on this side just to see what it would do. Apparently they didn't do much since the bulbs were a bit small. But now its bonus garlic to go to our haul of garlic.

The new Great grandma rose

With only a small amount of work, and transplanting one of great grandma's stars, we got the new rosebush in its home. It has done well here and is getting ready to start blooming. Maybe having a rosebush with stars will be enough to remind all of us of great grandma. I know she would love that we are doing something small for her and so her Pooka and Brother can say goodbye.

Garlic Test Harvest

A few days ago, Daddy and I saw some of the garlic had died back. Not all of it, but a good test pull as we called it. Daddy was so anxious to see what the garlic was doing. He and Pooka tell me they are tempted to pull it to see what it is doing.

Garlic ready for harvest

We ended up pulling out about 4 plants. Not a huge test but it was a start. We only pulled the ones that had fallen over and were almost completely brown. Pooka loves harvesting garlic since it gives her an excuse to play in the dirt. The downside is that you have to be super careful (which Pooka isn't always) so you don't destroy the bulb. One bulb got squished and then rotted before we could use it. Oops. We had 2 very good sized garlic bulbs out of our test pulls. Daddy was happy they were the size we would find at a store. We had one smaller one but those are just as good for drying and cooking. Pooka loved just getting to pull them out and helping me tie them together to dry.

Test harvest

On one plant we found this weird growth in the stem of the plant. I broke it (which is why I wanted the bulb to pull) and it had these little mini cloves of garlic in it. I guess I didn't get all the scapes. I have seen one or 2 other plants with these growths. I will have to plant the "garlic seed" as we have taken to calling it and see what it does next year. They smell like garlic. Have you any idea what these are?

"Garlic Seed" maybe

FINALLY!!!!!!

About a week ago, I saw something in the garlic. Something that I was beginning to think was only a rumor, a scam to get people to buy different kinds of garlic.

What do you see?

But it turns out, they are not as mythical is bigfoot. We finally have proof that scapes do exist. We had a ton of them in our garlic bed. Scapes are actually the flowers of the garlic plant. Pooka was so excited to see these curly bits in her garlic. I was more excited since I had heard these were a yummy bit to try and we can't find them around here. Supposedly, the only way to get them is to grow your own. So Pooka and I went outside and cut them. 

I see Scapes hiding in the garlic

Pooka loved that when she cut them a bit of water came out of the plant. I told her that is how the plant is getting nutrients through it, and she found it cool. I will admit we didn't cut back as far as we probably could of, but since its our first year. I am happy with the over 5 oz we got. 

Hello lunch

 We kept our scapes simple by just sauteing them with a bit of oil. Daddy did a wonderful job of preparing them. It turns out you cut off the flower (the triangle part) and eat the stalk. I would definitely call this a success. Even Kiddo who is a tad pickier then the rest of the liked it. He said it was kinda like green beans with garlic. Pooka kept asking for more to the point we had to make her eat her meat before she could clean out the bowl. I barely got the picture before she finished them off. Now to wait another year and see if we can get more.

Cooked scapes that were yummy

And the Herb bed explodes

Even before this week of rain, the herb garden had exploded. Apparently having been in the ground all winter did not stunt their growth at all. The garlic has gotten super tall. I am already waiting and hoping on all that fresh garlic. Daddy even asked if we could find a few cloves to try canning with some hot peppers. I am sure I can find you a bulb or two dear. 

Garlic is doing well.

In the herb bed, there are plenty of plants that have enjoyed this spring as well. The tarragon especially jumps at you in this picture. I am going to have to start drying and using it. The thyme plants have all come back fairly quickly as well. Pooka's purple sage has come back a bit more green than last year, but I am wondering if that will change through the summer. 

A portion of the herb bed

There is much more growth further down the bed, but I forgot to take pictures. The one thing that doesn't seem to be doing well is one of my lilacs, but I was worried it may not come back in the first place. I am hoping to get out there in the next day or so and get a good count of whats out there and hopefully hit the nursery with Pooka and get the remaining herbs so we can get them in and going. After that, it is all harvest with a bit of weeding.

Garlic everywhere

Spring is finally starting to really show its face. The garlic has just started appearing everywhere in the last few days. We have had wonderful rains that watered our pea seeds and have given the garlic a boost to come out and find the sun. I can finally begin to feel the truth of spring in the air.

Garlic anyone?

Pooka is excited to see real garlic coming up as well. Every day you can see her stopping to admire her herb and garlic areas as she comes home from school. She loves walking it to see what has started to look like it may come back, and what has grown. Daddy is excited since he finally used the last of our homemade garlic powder yesterday and misses it already. He asked if we could please please make more. I told him of course once the garlic is ready but soon we will have other things to get to work preserving and harvesting.

The herb bed right now

What the herb bed looks like right before the sudden snow storm. Since I did NOTHING to put it to bed, I am not terribly surprised that is is not looking its best. I am giving the herbs their time to see if they will come back. We have had very little the way of warm days, and since it was such a severe winter, and this side of the house only gets morning sun, I am hoping in a few days something may come back.

 I know we lost a couple rosemary bushes that have lost almost all their needles while they turn brown. And the curry of all things seems to be doing okay as well as the bay. But I know eventually its going to need cleaned out and that will take most of a day.

The garlic beds looks just as dormant, but Pooka has seen a few tender shoots come up. Soon we will hopefully have our garlic for the year poking out everywhere, and things will start to look alive once more. I think seeing these two beds turn green will finally make spring real for us, so long as we stop getting snow. Which sadly is in the forecast for next week. Winter Let US GO. 

Garlic powder

With the abundance of garlic we had this year, Daddy and I decided to try and use the single clove heads of garlic to make our own garlic powder. It is a fairly simple process, but it does take some time and some effort on our part.

Garlic that has cured for awhile

This is one bulb from the smaller garlic plants. They are 1 clove of garlic in the bulb, and perfect for this since they are pain to use for cooking (too much peeling to do multiples of). However, the first step, like anything with garlic is to remove the peel and cut off the root end of the garlic.  

That is 1 clove of garlic

Yes, this is the size of one clove. I was trying to use my thumb for scale. As you can see they garlic is good sized for one clove, but fairly small if that is suppose to be a whole bulb. Next you slice the garlic into thin slices.

Drying Garlic

Once sliced into thin slices, you lay the garlic out on the dehydrator rack. We tried to keep all the slices the same thickness, but due to what we were slicing, we did have some variation. The thinner your slices, the shorter the drying time. I think we let ours run most of a day or so until they were fairly brittle.

Garlic powder made the old fashioned way

Then comes the turning it to powder part. I would love to say I used the mortar and pestle for ALL of our garlic powder, but I would be lying. We tried the mortar and pestle and it worked quite well, but took forever, and since this was something where I really really didn't have all day to spend grinding, we decided to use our emersion blender's chopper bowl attachment. That worked quiet well but make sure when you are done, you leave it closed and off for a long time before opening to allow all the dust to settle. 

Homemade Garlic powder

We poured it into a empty glass spice bottle and threw a label on it. Daddy has decided this tastes light years better then the commercial stuff. 

Looking ahead

Last night I did something. Something I swore I didn't have time for. Something that makes me wonder what I have gotten myself into.

I ordered garlic online for next year. While our garlic harvest hasn't been great, it is something that Daddy and I use a metric ton of. I swear we always have at least 3 bulbs in our fridge.

Part of this years's harvest

Add to that the fact that we have started making our own garlic powder. Yes we are making garlic powder, and Daddy has decided he really likes the homemade stuff light years better then the store bought stuff.

Homemade garlic powder

So next year, we are going to try a hard neck and a soft neck garlic. One is even purple for Pooka. I am not going to lie and say the garlic is for her. Its for Daddy and I, but she got to pick one, and it was the purple. Now to see what it looks like when it gets here.

Rainbow Salsa

Recently we had to clean out the fridge. The garden had produced some much that we really needed to do something. We had tomatoes, but we had so many peppers and onions we decided to make salsa. But none of the recipes we found really encompassed everything we had, so we decided to make Pooka's Rainbow Salsa. It got its name from the rainbow of colors that went into it and Pooka loves making things colorful.

Tomatoes, onion, purple, sweet and Jalapenos all in the pot.

Into it went:
19 cups of tomatoes (including Roma, Beefsteak, Betterboy, Fireball and colored Cherry tomatoes)
6 cups onion (red and white)
9 1/2 Jalapenos
3 cups Bell peppers (Red peppers, Sweet peppers and cubanelles)
3 purple 5 color peppers
1 bulb of garlic
3 cups of Cilantro

Rainbow salsa all ready to go

We ended up making 11 pints of Rainbow Salsa. They look so good, we are only hoping it is not too hot with all the purple peppers in it. We will see, but it definitely looks pretty good. It looks a bit less colorful in the jars, but it should taste good.

Close up of the salsa

Starting to really see results

The garlic and the red onions were starting to look really sad. Daddy and I decided it was time to deal with them.

The red onions are done

The red onions were falling over and in some cases drying out. I could finally see how bad the weeds were. It was time to pull them.

Test bulbs

A test yank of the onions showed that we had some smaller onions. They were decent sized so we went ahead and pulled the red ones.

A bad picture of the entire harvest

The final harvest of the red onions. It doesn't look like much here, but the onions are about half the size you see at a grocery store. This works well for us since we tend to only use about half a red onion at a time. We decided to lay them out in the garage to dry/cure so we can try and store them.

Garlic is done

 The last of the garlic finally gave up. It had browned and fallen over.

The big ones have even given up

 Even the big giant plants were falling over and had given up. Daddy has been so excited to pull these. The giant garlic plants made bulbs about on par with what you would see at a grocery store. In fact, I think we will be making a point to get the garlic in the ground during the fall.  And if it sprouts early and grows over the winter, it does not seem to hurt them.

Overwintered garlic

I am comparing the overwinter garlic to the ones we had planted this spring. I had harvested them much earlier this year and they are considerably smaller then the winter garlic. The spring garlic was also from a nursery where the overwintered garlic was from a organic market. While neither ever produced the scrapes everyone talks about, I think we got our money worth from it all.

Spring garlic

All this harvesting has left us with a fairly empty bed. I am hoping to fix that today. But that is another post.