How Does Your Garden Grow?

We've had a run of some unseasonably mild temperatures.  We've had some rain, but as we've been on the edge of the weather systems, we've gotten a reasonable amount rather than the heavy rains just to the north of us.  We've had some sunshine.  I can't tell you how nice it is to see a blue sky, rather than a grey sky.  We've had so many grey skies this winter.

I checked the garden beds the other day.   Because we let the chooks out one day, some of the pots have been dug up from them looking for bugs.  They tend to scatter the soil about.  On the ground it isn't an issue, but in the large planters, they can make a lot of mess, and half empty pots.  I'll just have to get more triple mix and manure to make up the difference.

Last spring I bought a couple of bales of straw.   I had some that I'd used to mulch the large raised beds, but I was hoping that if I left these two out over the summer, they'd start to compost and be a nice addition to dress the raised beds in the fall.   They'd started composting nicely and I dressed the empty bed fairly heavily, with 4in - 6 in of straw.   I'd planted garlic in just under half of the other raised bed, so I only put 2 or 3 inches of straw over the garlic.  I wanted it to have an easier time of sprouting in the spring.  I've had some struggle and start off a little curled up one year when I had a bit too much heavy mulch on my garlic.   Today I checked and we have garlic already sprouting!  Of the 45 cloves I'd planted last fall, 8 are already starting to grow.   It never starts out all at once, so I'm pretty happy.   It's hard neck garlic, and mostly the Music variety.  We're supposed to have rain all week, but the temperatures will be summer like.  I'll pop out to the feed store and pick up some compost to top dress the garlic, over the straw. in hopes of getting slightly bigger bulbs.  There are enough for us to use for a while and to use some as gifts.  I've already had family members suggest that they could be the recipients of our excess!  

I planted some chives in a planter last summer.  Not even one of the large planters, but a medium-ish sized pot on the deck, so that it was easily reached to use over the summer.   It sort of languished and never really got useably large, and I forgot about it as I didn't think it would over winter in that particular pot.  It did though and is growing really, really well!  I'll have chives to use this summer for certain.

The Blue Squill is blooming in full force.   We should have two patches, but one is struggling this year.  I think it may have gotten a bit compacted by the snow, weird winter weather and its proximity to the fire pit and maple syrup production. It's hardy though and the bulbs spread quite readily.

We also have the daffodils, tulips and alliums starting.  The leaves are growing.  We won't have tulip or alliums for a while yet, but a few of the daffs are starting to bud up.   With the warm weather expected this week, they should bud up and maybe start flowering really quickly.

My son in law is generously starting some tomato seedlings for me.   He starts all sorts of interesting plants, but as we have somewhat limited our growing space these days, I'm less adventurous in what I plant.  I mainly just grow the basics that we really like to eat, and some plants to put up for use over the winter.  Sometimes it works out better than others.  One summer we at zucchini almost every other day for several months.   Another, I managed to get enough

tomatoes to can for use over the whole winter.  I haven't been able to find that particular variety - Amish Paste Tomato- since.  Too bad because it produced a lot of fruit, but it didn't all ripen at once, so canning it was super easy.  The tomatoes were really tasty too.

I'm so happy that the garden season is starting.   If I pick up some arugula, spinach and leaf lettuce seeds, hopefully we'll have  salads soon too!   Let's hope that we don't get the fruit trees flowering this early and then having more frosty weather afterwards, which damages the new buds and hurts the fruit harvests.

Freezing Garlic

 We were able to get the last of the locally grown, hardneck garlic from my sweeties farmer friend.   Usually he sells it in 2 lb bags, but he had 1 lb left.   My sweetie ordered it and it came home with him a couple of days ago, with the warning that it wouldn't last long.  I figured that because the last of our garlic from the 4 lbs we had in the fall, was either drying up or sprouting.  I had the option of freezing it or dehydrating it.   I don't really like the smell or taste of commercially dehydrated garlic, although we have one of those multi-function pressure cooker/air fryer appliances, do dehydrating would have been easy.   Freezing though is fast, and the frozen garlic will last up to 6 months.

The biggest issue with freezing garlic, is actually peeling it.   I checked out a few websites and videos about mass peeling garlic.   Apparently if you put a bunch of the individual cloves in a bowl or container, cover it and then shake it vigorously, the papery skins just fall off.   I tried it.   I tried it several times, in several different containers and as this photo shows, only 2 cloves were partially peeled.  The rest of the cloves papery skins were solidly attached.     The other issue with this method was that a couple of garlic cloves started to get bruised.  I think that grocery store, soft necked garlic would likely work with this method.  It has smaller cloves and may be dried differently. 

I ended up using a large knife, and tapping the garlic cloves, to crack the skins.  Then they easily peel off.  It took a couple of tries to get the pressure correct.  I usually use this method for cooking, but I use a hefty bit of pressure to crack the garlic so that the peel is almost completely removed and the garlic cloves is flattened for use.

It really didn't take a lot more pressure to flatten the clove completely.   Here you can see that the garlic is starting to sprout.   If it were any larger, it would start affecting the flavour, but the garlic taste on this was still good.

It took about 20 minutes to peel all the garlic.  It was a bit over a pound of garlic.  Look at the big, healthy cloves!   If I trimmed the tough root ends off, the garlic oils and odor could possibly escape more easily, so I left the cloves intact.   I should be able to just pluck out a couple of garlic cloves at a time and after a couple of minutes thawing, start to slice them fairly easily.  They can be trimmed up as necessary then.

A few years ago, my husband decided he wanted to try taking his lunch to work in glass containers.  It didn't last long though, because the glass storage containers are pretty heavy.  But plastic can take on the odor of the garlic quite quickly so the glass storage container was perfect.  It does have a plastic lid, but it's supposed to be air tight.   Plus it was a good size.   There were around 3 cups of garlic cloves.     So far there is no residual odor in the freezer.  Yay!     Considering how much garlic we tend to use in daily cooking, I don't think it will last long enough to see if it does last 6 months in the freezer.  I'm happy that it won't be sprouting on the shelf though