Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Well what do you know... garlic!

My gardening space used to be super tiny, now it's just small. Before the addition of our 4x8 raised bed, I gardened in mostly containers and 3 strips of our backyard border that ranged from 2x2 to 2x4. And being new (and frankly a procrastinator) didn't help matters.  So during the late summer/early fall when I should have been ordering garlic from seed companies, I didn't.  Instead in the late fall I found some "garlic" started for me and purchased a 4 cellpack. And then started sticking in cloves as they were found randomly sprouting in my kitchen.  Lesson learned.... get off my butt this year and order the darn garlic!

I've been embarrassed to show any of the garlic planted in my garden because they looked to be in bad shape. So yesterday, as I was reading through blogs, I realized what was going on!  My garlic had flopped over because it was time to pull it!  So off I went with my handy dandy spade.

A garlic that was... um... helped out in standing up tall....
(pay no attention to our rusty fence, it's on our  to do list)


And dug up some garlic heads!  I left a few in the ground that hadn't sized up yet. I came away with 1 monster head and about 6 normal sized ones. Apparently the "garlic" I purchased was a softneck variety, so next year I buy hardneck and keep a lookout for scapes!

Pulled garlic "curing" in our shed
 He he he, you learn something new everyday everywhere as long as you keep your eyes and ears open!

Happy gardening all!  Now I go see what kind of trouble I can get into today.

2 comments:

  1. Your garlic looks so good! I would never have paid attention to your fence, if you hadn't mentioned:)

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  2. Yes, definitely try the hardneck kind. It's amazing to be able to harvest scapes. BTW, I saw this Radish Top soup link posted by My Edible Urban Homestead. http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Radish-Top-Soup/Detail.aspx I haven't tried it but it looks amazing.

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