Tag: garlic

Posted on by Josh

Fezzik the buck is visiting for a few weeks, so we’ll probably have another crop of kids in the spring.

We have tons of orach sprouting in the garden from the stalks that went to seed. We’ll see if it lasts through winter. The Chinese broccoli is still going, and doing better, in fact, with the aphids diminishing as the weather gets cooler.

We haven’t had any mushrooms so far this fall, but we still have plenty preserved from last year.

We decided that try harvesting black walnuts from the tree across the road. They are notorious for their hard shells. First we gathered them and removed the meaty outer fruit, which can be used to make ink or dye. Now we’re letting them dry for a few weeks. Then we’ll try cracking them and extracting the nut meat.

We’re down to five chickens at the moment. We’re still getting some eggs.

Heather is doing the pumpkin drop-off site again by road, and the pumpkins are pouring in.

The garlic Heather planted a few weeks ago is barely sprouting. We’ll see what happens.

Posted on by Josh

Lots to catch up on…

The peas just kept on peaing through the summer. We got the last of them, for the most part, a week or so ago, but we’re still getting a few more here and there.

The green beans finally started producing and we got plenty for a few weeks, but they’re about done now.

We harvested the last corn on the cob last week. It was probably about a week past it’s prime.

I planted Chinese broccoli in early August, I think. It bolted quickly, but I cut and used the stalks. It also got aphids real bad on the buds and flowers, so I tossed those parts. We planted kale right next to the Chinese broccoli a few weeks ago, and a few aphids were showing up there, too. But we’ve been able to start picking some kale (and chard) last week.

The potato and chickpea harvests have been good. The tomatoes were late this year, but they’ve been doing well. We bottled about 36 points of pizza sauce. We’ll make salsa with our next batch. Which reminds me: the peppers have been solid producers this year: banana, jalapeño, and poblano.

Our plum tree about killed itself this year. Literally, several branches broke from the weight of the fruit. We made some great plum BBQ sauce and sweet & sour sauce. We harvested a bunch of purple plums from Wayne’s tree a few weeks ago and dehydrated them.

Heather started planting garlic today.

We harvested two of the young goats with much-appreciated help from our son-in-law. It’s a hard thing to do. He got one and we kept the other. We put 20 pounds of meat in our freezer. Heather was able to sell the other two young goats this week. They went to a lovely piece of land a few miles west of here to work in brush management.

Posted on by Josh

I planted about eight feet of Blue Lake bush beans on the west end of row 1. It’s been a grass-infested corner of the garden, so hopefully the bean plants and wood chips will keep the grass out.

Heather harvested garlic from the garden and in front of the house. The bulbs from in front of the house are small, but better than nothing.

And we still have mushrooms coming out our ears.

Posted on by Josh

The freeze a couple weeks ago kept temperatures below freezing most of the week (lows in the teens). There wasn’t much snow, but something whitish that resembled snow that took forever to melt… freezing rain or sleet, I guess. It took out the celery and chard, and the artichoke plants took a beating. Even the kale got “burned,” but most of the leaves were still harvestable. The Chard and artichokes will resume growing with new leaves. The alliums (leeks and garlic) were totally fine. Surprisingly, the lettuce also seems to have survived fine. The ice took down the deer netting fence in spots. I tacked it back up when the freeze was over.

Posted on by Josh

I think the mushroom harvest has finally ended. Wow! I’m pretty sure we have a year’s worth of dehydrated mushrooms thanks to Heather’s work.

The new growth on the artichoke plants looks great. They’re over two feet tall. Im excited to see what next year brings.

As of yesterday, we were still harvesting tomatoes and the late summer planting of peas. They’ve definitely slowed down, though, with fewer hours of daylight.

Heather pulled two potato plants today and got several pounds of potatoes. Here’s the biggest one:

She also harvested a rutabaga. There are several more out there. Plenty of kale and chard, too. And we haven’t even touched the leeks yet

Heather planted garlic in the garden and around the grapes around the beginning of October. It’s already sprouting.

We started moving some firewood into the carport for this season’s burning. We still have a lot of wood to split to get ready for next season.

Posted on by Heather

Today I harvested 130 heads of Italian garlic. It was so satisfying.

This garlic was part of Josh’s birthday gift to me in September 2022. He ordered a beautiful purple italian variety for me to plant last fall. He also connected with a friend and got several pounds of another variety (which I call the “Roberts’ garlic”). Top 10 birthday gift. ❤️❤️❤️

During the 2021-2022 gardening season, ALL of our garlic plants (and leeks) were eaten by a gopher. Because of this, I over-planted garlic last September to ensure that we not only had backup garlic this summer, but backup-backup garlic, and worst-case-scenario garlic, and apocalyptic end-of-days garlic.

My strategy has worked so far. Kinda. We still have a gopher popping up near the pasture garlic patch (with only one alliumicide so far). But the garlic patch by the front door is untouched, as is the allium row in our main garden. We even had three renegade clumps of garlic pop up under the grape vines, which is where they had been planted the previous season. Those lucky three garlics somehow evaded the Great Gopher Garlic Gorge of 2021-2022.

When we lived in upstate New York, there was an older lady in our apartment building who gave me some advice. “If it’s 5 o’clock and you haven’t started cooking dinner, start sauteing some garlic– it’ll trick your husband into thinking dinner’s almost ready.” Not sure I’m on board with tricking my husband (plus, he’s always so willing to be a part of anything I do in the kitchen), however I do believe that the smell of sauted garlic is inspiring. It’s a solid flavor base for any meal.

None of the other garlic I planted last fall is ready to harvest yet. In my very first year of garlic growing, I harvested everything the week of the 4th of July. Today is only May 26th!! Hurray for early harvests!! Maybe the rest will be ready in July. You know when it’s time to harvest after you remove the scapes, then watch for the third leaf to begin browning, and that’s when you harvest. If the first bulb you pull isn’t fully formed wait a week and try, try again.

This September I will plant more and more and more garlic. My goal is to grow the garlic under the grape vines and beneath the fruit trees. We dumped a bunch of wood chips under the grape vines early this spring (Josh almost got the tractor stuck, but he was able to dig himself out with the bucket). Hopefully the area under the grapes and beneath the fruit trees will become a happy home for my allium allies.

The Italian garlic is curing in the carport on some wire racks. Lots of airflow. It’ll rest there for about 2 weeks, then I’ll be able to braid or otherwise process my beautiful, beautiful garlic.

I love garlic. I love **everything** about garlic.

And if you’re a TL:DR kind of person, I’ll give you Josh’s version of this post:

“Heather harvested 130 garlic bulbs this morning. It’s curing on racks in the carport. She planted different varieties of garlic in several spots on our property. The other varieties she planted aren’t ready to be harvested yet.” ☺️

Posted on by Josh

The neighbor’s hay got cut on May 17, way earlier than usual. I wonder if there will be a second cutting this year.

The garden is mostly planted now. Transplanted: hops, kale, peppers, and tomatoes. Seeded: beans.

Grant’s garden is also started: Old Mother Stallard beans and a couple dozen watermelon seeds.

We transplanted a rhubarb plant on the north side of the house.

The cilantro that overwintered is blooming, so we should be able to harvest coriander seed soon. Heather checked a couple of garlic plants, and they have about four plump cloves per head. Hopefully by harvest time on June, they’ll have more cloves, but they’re looking great.

Karen the sheep was late to lose her winter coat this year. She still has a small patch on her back.

Posted on by Josh

Lots to catch up on:

The garden was later than usual this year but quite productive. We had days in the 80s into mid-October, so the harvest kept coming. I picked an ear of corn a day for dinner for about two months. Heather made lots of pasta/pizza sauce and salsa with the tomatoes and peppers, and salsa verde with the green tomatoes when the frost came. Heather planned a second crop of potatoes after harvesting the first, and she got a great second harvest.

Grant’s garden in the pasture was a huge success. He just covered the issue head with lots of wood chips during the winter, then planted in late spring. He had lots of corn and zinnias, and he was harvesting melons into early November.

The deer finally discovered our garden a few weeks ago. They’ve decimated some of the greens that we would like to harvest through the winter. I guess we’ll have to come up with some defenses.

Heather has planned a bunch of garlic, boy in the garden and next to the pasture. We’re going is not concerned by gophers again next year.

It looks like the commercial hazelnut harvest was good this year. They harvested the orchard behind us at the end of September and made a second round in mid-October just as the rain was coming.

We started using our woodstove in mid-October when weather abruptly turned from hot to rainy. (Then the rain went away again, but the cold stayed.) We have less than we would like for this winter, but it is enough to make a difference. Plus, when we get insulation installed upstairs in mid-December, we hope that will help a lot. We bought a catalyst for the woodstove, and we’re gradually learning how to use the stove efficiently. We should have plenty of wood for next year, though. A lot of it is pine, and I wish we had more hardwoods, but it’s all free, so we’ll take it. We have probably split and stacked about two cords so far, and we still have those big chunks of pine to cut and split.

Speaking of splitting: I’ll probably have to split the tractor again. The clutch is slipping, and I’m guessing one of the springs on the clutch may have broken.

Posted on by Heather

Gophers ate my garlic. A lot of it. Maybe it was one lone gopher, maybe it was an underground army of gophers. I don’t know, but I do know that I was planning on a massive garlic harvest this year, and that dream is now writhing on the ground like a half-dead burrito.

Over the past few months I have watched gophers systematically take down bulb after bulb in my precious garlic patch, taking out half of my elephant garlic, half of my hard neck garlic and half of my soft neck garlic.

Gophers are extremely hard to exterminate with a pellet gun–I’ve tried. They only pop up for a few seconds before heading back down. It’s really a game of crazy luck to be able to see a gopher and have time to open the window, load and aim before the furry garlic theif goes back down. I’ve done it once in my lifetime, and I earned the respect of everyone that my husband told the story to. “The day Heather shot a gopher from the kitchen window.” I faked modesty whenever he told the story, but I was dang proud and still am.

This morning I looked out the window and noticed two more stalks of my elephant garlic were sideways. I went out to survey the damage, when I noticed a burrito-sized animal writhing a few inches away from a freshly dug hole near the elephant garlic.

It was a partially-alive gopher–with an aching belly full of my garlic, no doubt. I poked it with the fallen green stems left over from its elephant garlic bulb feast. It continued to squirm. It was awful. I felt bad for its suffering, but still had time to deliver this powerful, embarrassingly loud speach, that hopefully struck fear and dread into the hearts of nearby sub-earth dwellers (and unfortunately, a few people walking by):

“YOU SHOULD NOT EAT MY GARLIC. THAT IS NOT A NICE THING TO DO. THIS IS MY GARLIC AND I DON’T WANT TO SHARE IT. YOU ATE SO MUCH, AND THAT IS PROBABLY WHY THIS TERRIBLE THING IS HAPPENING TO YOU. DO NOT EAT MY GARLIC.”

And so, I publicly issue this warning to all sub-earth dwellers: Let the words of my impassioned, bold speech echo in your ears, and share these words with your fellow ground dwellers, your children and your children’s friends, since you probably won’t live long enough to meet your grandchildren.

Respectfully,

The Owner of the Garlic

Posted on by Heather

We have our very first harvest of garlic! Over the last few weeks I’ve pulled a couple test bulbs to see if they were ready, but today everything was ready!! You can tell that is ready for harvest when the bottom two leaves are dried up and the third is partially dried up. If you wait too long, the bulb will split apart and but preserve as well.

I took the big garden fork (the one I gave to Josh for Christmas last year) and started loosening up the soil around the garlic while trying not to dislodge the corn, salad greens or peas.

Our garden holds water really well, so every clump of garlic I pulled up had about 4 pounds of wet dirt attached to it. No amount of shaking would dislodge it, so I resorted to picking off the clods so that the garlic would dry out faster. I went against all the rules and dipped about half of the bulbs in a bucket of muddy water to get the huge chunks of dirt off. Next year this won’t be an issue because the garlic will be in an area of our property where we don’t water–under the grape vines. I plan to double the garlic next year so that I can give some to friends and family as gifts. Also, I think we can eat lots of garlic in the year 2022. I can guarantee that.

  • These will dry out completely, then I’ll braid them
  • This whole wheelbarrow plus the galvanized bucket were filled to overflowing with garlic
  • These are two of our six bulbs of elephant garlic

We have a beautiful harvest of 100 bulbs. They’ll be drying in the carport for the next 2-4 weeks. It’s going to be 103-113 over the next few days, so we might end up with roasted garlic. No worries though, they’re shaded and there’s a slight breeze.

  • I’m so happy that we grew something that we can use throughout the coming year! We can use 1-2 bulbs a week for the next year (after I set aside a dozen large bulbs for planting this fall).

My next garden task, after the weather stops having a tantrum, is to aggressively prepare the grape area for growing garlic. We have the chickens out there amending the soil, but we also need to aerate with the garden fork, kill some grass with cardboard and wood chips, then add some fresh rabbit manure. I want next year’s harvest to be phenomenal and massive.

#garlicgoals

Posted on by Heather

We have a massive heat wave hitting us this weekend. Highs will be in the hundred-and-teens. We’re doing everything we can to prepare. We’ve frozen blocks of ice for our rabbits, checked the water levels in the garden (those soakers hoses water deeply!) and have added extra water and shade for our chickens and rabbits.

While we may experience some non-preventable losses this weekend, we have done everything we can to be prepared.

The two animals that don’t seem to be bothered by any of this heat are the Indian Runner ducks and Karen (our St Croix–a heat tolerant sheep). The ducks + ducklings spend the day splashing and lounging. And Karen seems to not mind the heat.

Josh and I did a garden walkthrough last night as part of date night (but it’s also becoming a fun 2x daily tradition). He collected soil samples from four parts of our garden and I planted bush beans where the struggling peas are. We came inside the house, dripping with sweat. This heat coupled with high humidity reminds me of the very small, teeny tiny country of El Salvador. When we check the weather for El Salvador, we can’t complain about our little heat wave. They have high heat and high humidity 6 months out of the year–plus lightning, volcanoes, and organized crime. We just have two out of the three in Portland.

Our garlic is looking so, so good. I’m looking forward to a generous harvest in early July. I want to save a good amount to use as seed for this September when we plant garlic under the grape vines. Can you imagine what life would be like with unlimited free garlic??

Posted on by Josh

In the stories of Peter Rabbit, as of today I ally myself with Mr. McGregor.

The bunnies are escaping on a daily basis. They mowed down all of the leeks, tatsoi, peppers, tomatoes, snapdragons, a few garlics, and all of my lettuce. I’m not a happy gardener.

Posted on by Heather

We planted several garlic varieties in late September/early October. I actually can’t quite remember when we planted it.

Chesnok Red (hardneck) in failed lettuce patch.

Deerfield (hardneck) in the ne corner, with elephant garlic on very end of row.

Dujanski (hardneck) by bean trellis.

Health store garlic (no idea what variety) on failed bean row.

Here’s to a huge harvest of garlic! My goal is to have enough by July 2021 to weave into braided garlic.