You are currently browsing the monthly archive for May, 2008.
As the heat of summertime approaches – the garlic patch got me thinking, ok it’s time to bring up all the learning of the past seasons to ready for this year’s harvest. The garlic is, at this time, up to my waist! Mckenna calls this the garlic house, and it has quite a lovely place to sit in the center, where one can be hidden to the untrained eye…
This is the healthiest garlic i’ve ever had the pleasure of tending to. It’s now time to watch for the sending of the flower, it curls it’s way up very subtle like- it’s best to snap the flower stalk while still in a bud form, these can be cooked up with other veggies! A way I like to remember it is- if you let the garlic flower- all the energy will go into producing that. If you snap it off, the energy will go back into the root to form the ‘head’. Really it’s a very similar approach as other bulb flowers (if you don’t cut the stalk after the flower, the plant will focus on the seed…).
Once this has been attended to, you wait to watch the upper portion of the plant begin to die back, at this point you stop watering the lot- it likes to be dry for at least two weeks prior to harvest. My friend Chuck let me in on one of his secrets- when all but three leaves of the plant have died back, it is ready to harvest. I have let mine die all the way down in the past, but end up with a thinned skin head. The ‘three leaves’ technique, gives three solid layers over the head. I tried this with the seed garlic he gave me two years ago, and it was perfect. The hardest part of it was to save the healthiest heads for planting last fall- but I’m so glad I did! We have approximately 90 garlic stalks, 4 different varieties. We’ll save a good portion of that for planting this October, while adding a few more that we couldn’t get last year.
Spending a few hours with the garden and my farm community is such amazing food for the soul- there’s really no words to describe it, this feeling. Divine Love.
WoW- another whirlwind planting on the farm- We…
planted scarlet runner beans- built a trellis out of bamboo and long canes from a native rose, planted cilantro, soybeans, sunflowers and watered all! We then picked lilacs for the kids to take home.
I know it doesn’t sound like much as i write it, but maybe i should add that this all in an hour with the kids.
The tomatoes spent their first full night outside last night, i was a bit worried like a mother hen- crazy i know. I’ve been slowly acclimating them over the past three weeks, starting with just an hour or two, and slowly building their time outside to ‘harden’ them. I think the tomatoes will be ready to plant in the garden by next week. We have a flat of basil about two inches tall in the kitchen greenhouse- and the second planting of chili peppers is reaching 7″ now, the first planting is almost a foot tall and about ready to flower. With them being so ahead in the season, we may actually get some peppers! I read once that a trick to getting chili peppers hotter is to let the soil fully dry out in between waterings- almost to wilting! We might have to give that a try. I’ve been doing the same ‘hardening’ technique with the first planting of chili peppers- but they haven’t stayed out overnight, just yet- we’ll wait until it’s a bit warmer.
The one thing about it being such a whirlwind of activity is that soon we will have a visual of all that will be growing on the farm this year- it will be stunning as well overwhelming!!! We’ve been documenting a bit here and there with the camera, and that will make it’s way here soon… We had most of the photos on our website that was slowly coming together, but yesterday, Cote went to the site and everything was gone- vanished! The site now looks as though we haven’t even started yet- back to square one- I’m happy that we kept the blog going, to know that we have a backup of most everything- we’ll just need to piece it together again, after the seeds are in the ground, of course!
Happy Spring to all! linda
