2020 How does your garden grow

[nhmoose]

Very Nice!

 

[Ames]

Thanks! All credit goes to Mrs. Ames. I cant braid to save my life. If she does it I can sell them for $25 all day long.
Last year they all (25?) sold in 2 days.
Then the lobstah is on me!

 

[Kansas Kid]

The hard neck garlic had dried down well this year and hit the farm stand. We had to wait a bit in all the humidity up here in the north for the soft necks to dry. But dry they have. Let the braiding begin!View attachment 39757View attachment 39758

I grow hardneck garlic that I found many years ago growing wild along the Wakarusa river. There was an old township there named Richland that completely burnt down long ago. The purple hardneck garlic is all that survives.

I see how you trim your roots and leave the tops on. Does it keep best that way? Do you cut the scapes while they are edible and let the tops die down before pulling them?

 

[Ames]

Your garlic needs roots cut to about 1/2" when trimmed. Cutting too close to the basil plate may let mold in. Also, you should peel one or two layers of the dry paper off. Once again, to hold mold at bay while storing.
Hard neck gets harvested when 2 or 3 of the bottom leaves die down, but 5 or 6 green ones are still in place. If left till the whole plant turns brown you face many potential hurdles and crop loss. Even one thunderstorm can split them open. I pull them, brush off the dirt, dry them under fans in a barn for 3 weeks, then trim the roots, cut the tops, and peel off 1 or 2 outer layers. That's hard neck.
The pictures I posted are soft neck. Nootka Rose to be exact. They don't get harvested until they are 50% brown, 50% green. Then they go through the same process, but it helps after the roots are cut and the paper and dirt is brushed away to lay the uncut tops on a damp beach towel for 15 minutes. It makes them more receptive to being braided with out breaking the tops.

 

[Kansas Kid]

Ok thanks. What do you do with the scapes on the hardneck garlic. Just let them seed out / cut them while tender and eat or make pesto?

 

[Ames]

All of the above.
I have found that letting the bulbils form on the scape is a multi year "pain in the powder horn" way of achieving new planting stock free of soil born disease.
For my operation up here I buy new planting stock certified disease free every year. Whether I hold back 20% of a crop to replant and loose 20% of the sales, or sell 100% of the crop and buy certified seed, the $ come close enough to equal. The piece of mind knowing its free of problems is worth it. Thus, the scapes are food. I give them away to those interested.
My hard necks keep until February up here. Perhaps March. I've seen the soft necks keep on the counter 18 months with no sprouting and little weight loss. 10 months is what I normally would expect from it.

This batch hits the farm stand today. People can hang them on the kitchen wall and clip off a head anytime they need one, all winter long. Its great marketing and sells 2lbs at a time.

 

[Kansas Kid]

Good to know. I let some complete their bulbils and have replanted from them and the cloves themselves. Never really thought of soil born disease. I looked all over the internet and never found this much information on garlic. Thanks

 

[QuinnTheEskimo]

Picked some tomatoes last night as well as some fresh basil and parsley, and my wife and I made a canned a batch of sauce.

 

[Ames]

Started picking peaches today for the farm stand. I got cleaned out twice today. This is part of the third picking.
Middle of Maine. Go figure. I'll pick for myself this weekend and can them in heavy syrup.
Mid winter blues and I'll make warm peach cobbler with them, over home made vanilla ice cream, and watch it snow...............

 

[Kansas Kid]

Good looking maters and peaches. Late frost got all my fruit blossoms this year. How often do you spray to get peaches like that?

 

[Carbon 6]

Something is still eating all my tomatoes. Chipmunk, Squirrel, vole, gopher, woodchuck. what ever it is, it's lucky I'm too busy right now to mess with it, or it would be one dead critter.

 

[Eutycus]

I put 6 tomato plants in my garden last month in hopes of having a few tomatos in a fall garden. But they are growing so slow that I got my doubts about them being ready before the first frost gets here. Plus it's so darn hot down here now I have shade over the young plants to keep them from burning up, Maybe lack of direct sunshine is what's causing the "slows". Oh well, this is South Texas.

 

[Ames]

Good looking maters and peaches. Late frost got all my fruit blossoms this year. How often do you spray to get peaches like that?

I don't. Those peaches are as natural as nature intended.
I do, however, spray my pear trees. Saw flies are wicked out of control up here and will shred the pears before a September picking.
We can the pears in a heavy syrup with a tablespoon of 20 year old rum.

 

[Kansas Kid]

The pest and cedar rust is terrible in my parts. Pears perform the best for me and I usually make preserves from them. Rum pears sounds really good.

 

[Rató:rats]

Seems my leaf vegetables did best this year. Kale, spinach, lettuce and radicchio are all good. Bishops Hat peppers and bell peppers also good. More parsley then you can shake a stick at. Zucchini and cucumbers were a bust. String beans are struggling. What’s really thriving in the garden this summer is my Cannabis plants. In Ontario every household is allowed four plants and boy my girls are going. Gonna be nice in the clay pipe this winter. Might try to make cordage from the stalks.

 

[Ames]

Or a TBS. of peach Schnapps works too.

 

[rrebuck]

This is my first year with a garden for over 10 yrs. I had some settling beside my septic tank that made the mower scalp the grass and I got sick of looking at it, so 12 yards of compost/topsoil and the pit was filled. Since the dirt looked so good and I didn't feel like mowing any more than necessary, it's now my garden. My tomatoes are doing really well, but everything was planted late, so I've only had a few ripen enough to pick, but I should have lots to come. I'm also trying lima and a couple varieties of string beans, which all seem to be doing well. I'm just learning that I need to properly space plants to have enough room to easily harvest them when they're ready. I plan to expand the garden next year, since it's doing so well.

 

[Ames]

No worries with the tomatoes. You can make fried green tomato BLT'S!

 

[zimmerstutzen]

Mrs. planted 24 Sun Sugar tomato plants and I think all of them have been producing. They are medium cherry sized and very sweet with a slight citrus tomato flavor. Our regular tomator plants were eaten by something. The zuccini plants are done, the yellow crook neck squash just started producing and the butter nut squash has at least a dozen fair sized squash coming. Looks like a bumper crop of horse radish coming.

 

[Eutycus]

Last month ago I put in 6 young tomato plants. I didn't have much choice at the nursery.They only had Celebritys or Valley Cats. I chose the Valley Cats, I like beefsteaks. The downsize is that they are Determinate Hybrids. Besides I never had much luck with the Celebritys.Neither were my first choice in a tomato plant. I just wish they'd hurry up. It has been unbearably hot down here.