Saturday, June 25, 2011

Garlic "Harvest" 2011


I had not intended to do much garden this year, and instead put my time and effort into making cheese... but as grocery prices keep increasing, I didn't have much choice.

I don't have much to harvest so far, although the zucchini monsters will be upon us soon! Most of what I have harvested is the bit of garlic planted last fall. I planted as many shallots as garlic, but something got almost all of the shallots when they started growing again this spring. Looks like I only harvested 3 small shallots, no more still in the ground look to have survived... and there is still more garlic growing that I'm hoping will get larger before the top growth dies completely. I'll plant shallots and garlic again this fall because I love them, and they are so easy (except for the shallot failure this year)!

My total garlic harvest (after I pulled up the remaining plants) is about 48 heads, now hanging in the root cellar to dry.



I picked a few heads of broccoli and several small, 1-person cabbages shown above. I didn't plant many cool weather seedlings this spring because it was so wet, but I'm hoping to do more in the fall.


I also picked some Yellow Cabbage Collards Greens but didn't take any pictures, just this one above taken today showing the seed pods. At the very base you can see the shape of the collard leaves, and the green growth to the right is mostly buckwheat mixed with a few weeds and grass. These collards are biennial, and the few I picked are apparently from seeds dropped last fall because I didn't plant any this year. I may do a planting for a fall harvest with these ripening seeds. I really like them; they are sweeter, and have smaller and more tender leaves than regular collards.

It will be ages before I have anything else to harvest, other than the summer squash and beans that everyone has growing. If you've seen one photo of squash and beans, you've seen them all, LOL. I did start a few bulbing fennel seeds but they got damping off disease, and it's probably too late to start more here in my zone.

2 comments:

  1. Great harvest!! I never had any luck here with garlic. It always rots in the ground.

    I picked some cucumbers today and I have squash to get as well. Some yellow cherry tomatoes are ready too. That's about the extent of what I can grow here in the limit sunny space that I have.

    Neener

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  2. Thanks! This is the least amount of garlic I've grown in years. Last year the creek flooding several times rotted most of it, so I only planted the higher end of the garden spot.

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