6:30AM and the sun comes through the trees
I was up at 5AM on Friday as I needed to get my post up and wanted to be out digging garlic by 6AM. I didn’t make it, not til 6:30AM.
Big garden, l – r: nasturtiums, balsam, spinach
I collected the totes, shovel and bucket and got set up.
This what the garlic looked like. Some of the top leaves had started to brown, even though many hadn’t gotten 2 brown ones on the bottom. I was afraid the scape problem had traveled to the bulbs…
You can see here, the one on the far left has brown leaves on top and only 1 brown one on bottom. The middle one looks normal. The one on the right is far too old.
I was determined this year to be more careful and not hit bulbs with the shovel. So I carefully kept 6” away from the stalks. I nicked a little a couple bulbs, but did much better this time.
Big garden - onions
I started on the row on the fence and pushed the mulch to the next row, then dug the bulbs. Then I pushed the mulch back over the dug area after walking on it to smooth it down. The third row I pushed the mulch all the way over in hopes of making it thick enough to serve.
The first tote fills up
Wildflower area – full of black-eyes susans and asters
Here I’ve prepped the next section’s first row, ready to dig.
By the time my #2 intern arrived at 8AM, I had 4 bulbs left to dig.
We walked down the dug areas and cleaned up any leftover leaves, just in case. This part was done. Later on we need to make sure the old mulch is deep enough, then bring more hay from the barn and mulch this area well.
She and I carried each tote over and we’d gotten the chairs from the cellar. It took a while to find the black bucket, as someone had filled it with birdhouses and put it in the back of the shed.
I sat with the hose and rinsed off the decaying skins and dirt and she cut off the roots and bad stems. This place was the third time we moved and set-up to keep out of the sun. There were a LOT of un-curable bulbs as the skins had rotted away. A lot of those bulbs had giant cloves.
The harvest was a severe disappointment. I’ve never had so many bulbs that couldn’t be cured. There were over 18# of them. I will have to cut up the cloves and dehydrate them on Tuesday in order to not lose them. There are far too many to eat before they go bad.
This means I won’t have enough seed garlic and will have to order in more from Fedco. That will be expensive!
She had tied the good enough ones together in bundles of 8 and hung them crosswise to each other, 2 to a nail in the alcove of the woodshed. There’s good air flow and the sun won’t reach them.
We got cleaned up and had finished by 11:30AM. I was beat and she headed home early with some of the ones we couldn’t cure.
I had some lunch and went to bed for a nap.
My son got the truck emptied and a second walkway mulched. I refilled the truck after supper.
On Saturday I have to get outside by 7AM and empty the trash shed. My brother will take me to the dump when I’ve finished. After I’ve rested from that, I may work on getting some of the garlic into the dehydrator.
In the afternoon when he gets home my brother and I are planning to make more basil pesto. This time we might use pine nuts. We plan to order out from a restaurant neither of us has eaten at before, for supper.