Garlic, Strawberries and Onions

For the first time ever, every garlic clove planted resulted in above ground growth.  Three were slow to emerge but they are all up and growing now.  Rot issues still exist in our harvest but the brown spots are smaller than in years past and fewer in number.  It is hard to believe but these plants will be harvested in less than ninety days from now.  We are opening a new planting bed here this year.  Potatoes will be planted there this year with garlic to follow in the fall.  We believe that new ground is regularly needed to avoid bulb rot issues.  That is another reason while the garden continues to expand while we cannot keep up with what is already here.

Our mail person drove up the hill to deliver a package today.  Our onion plants had arrived.  This bed grew potatoes last year and was covered with plastic bags full of fallen leaves over the winter.  After setting the bags aside, a quick stir with the potato hook had this ground ready to plant.  Welded wire fence establishes a grid that allows for quick placement of accurately spaced planting holes.  We used the same spacing that was used to plant the garlic.  Eight inches between the rows and six inches between plants in the row allows ample room for growth with just enough room for a weeding hand.

This photo is misleading.  Becky planted most of the onions while I set the few that were beyond her reach.  The bed in line with the onion bed contains thirty newly placed strawberry plants.  We ordered new strawberry plants last year from a new supplier.  We have done business with Miller's Nursery for decades but the death of one of the brothers caused the surviving brother to close their business.  The new Sparkle plants got off to a rocky start.  In one spot only five plants of the twelve planted grew.  We were not expecting much from the living but they produced a huge quantity of new plants from runners.  The blossoms will be removed from these plants this year to encourage plant growth and the production of more plants from runners.  We intend to train the runners so that two rows of plants similar to what is found at Hellers, where we pick jam berries, result.  Now to find some mulch straw.

I had harvested a pile of horse apples dropped by our neighbor's horses,  When the pile was moved to make way for the onions, this salamander was living in the warmth under the pile.  We do not know where it will spent this night but at least it escaped an inadvertent shovel injury. As near as I can tell it is a Northern red backed salamander.  He breathes through his skin, needs to stay wet and never actually goes in the water.  We have never seen one like this before!

Indiana Jones And The Garden Treasure

No!  Harrison Ford has not been has not been hanging around in my garden. He might enjoy flying over it in a small plane. Others seem to find that fun.  My garden is much too wild to enter without the benefit of a native guide.  August has been steamy and tropical here.  Everything has disappeared in the rampant growth.  I guess I am as close to a native guide as can be found.  First I must make sure I have the essentials to survive my trip into the underbrush.  Many dangers lurk there.  I dress in my white Solumbra clothes, carefully tuck my pants into my socks and apply insect repellent to my socks and hat.  I make sure I have water for the trip into the bush.  Protected from the heat of the sun and whatever insects I might encounter, I bravely begin going after the weeds that are going to seed first.

 After I have worked for some time I begin to see things I recognize.  Sometime in the not so distant past I may have seen a map of this area that tells me where some of the hidden treasure has been  planted  buried,  I can see signs of a stone path that  must lead somewhere.  I do not have a machete in my garden cart.  Besides the idea here is to find the buried treasure and restore the ancient stonework to its original condition. I am armed with my Cobrahead weeder.  I work carefully with my hook uprooting the tall grass. The sweet aroma of lemons let me know that  the lemon verbena was just to my right.  Mmmm...treasure!  Just a little farther on I found onions.  Whoever planted this treasure left stone markers with names like Red Cippolini, Copra, Red Wing and Walla Walla.  Wow! Organic onions at today's prices are really an treasure!!! I had to tie back a gigantic catnip plant to my left.  It is covered with seeds for the irresistible catnip that has always grown wild here.  I've made quite a few bucks stuffing catnip mice with that garden treasure.  I left a Nicotiana plant that was growing in the onion bed.  I'm curious to see exactly what kind it is, although they are all pretty much classed as poisonous.  I know Ed recognizes it so it's not that dangerous!  Organic dill seed is the last exotic treasure I will find on this expedition.  If you see the price per pound for this in the store, you will know it is  like finding the mother lode!

However, I can see the house in the distance and lunch is calling!  Perhaps tomorrow I will find my parsley or a beautiful tropical flower. I know I saw a beautiful white lily with red spots here somewhere.  Maybe I will go in search of the strawberry plants or the lemon grass or  ...

My Goodness What A Day In The Garden!

I headed out to the garden pretty early to pick squash blossoms to stuff for lunch.  It would have been a bit less exciting if I had gotten outside earlier.  As it was I had to shake bees out of the blossoms before I could place them in the plastic bag.  On my way out I noticed this milk snake curled up in the stone wall.  I promised myself I would take a picture if it was still there on my return.  There it was right at my eye level.  It looked like a fancy bracelet.  Ed and I did a couple rounds of "You touch it! " "No you touch it!"  In the end even though snakes give the the willies, I did touch it lightly.  It barely moved and was soft and dry to the touch.  Maybe someday I won't shriek when a snake surprises me, but I doubt it.

Woo Hoo!  I present to you the first Monarch caterpillar I have seen in the garden this summer.  In this picture it's a little hard to tell which end is up.  We watched it for some time and decided that the end with the shorter horns has the mouth.

I noticed him sitting on an immature seed pod.  Usually I find them chomping on the leaves.  I was delighted to see him!  I hope there will be more!  Our mowed area is looking a little strange as Ed avoids mowing the young milkweed now growing in our lawn.  He is unwilling to take the chance of cutting down a caterpillar food source.

We have left milkweed growing in the garden in places we would normally weed it out.  Here we have a lovely planting of Black-eyed Susans with three milkweed plants.  All of these plants are invasive and have displaced what we planted there.  In time we may see the winner here but perhaps both plants will survive.

We had a busy day in the garden.  We harvested onions, picked and processed Tavera green beans, picked some tomatoes, pulled lots of weeds and Ed mowed some the hay field that we pretend is our lawn.

We also discovered that a ground hog has dug a tunnel under one of Ed's stone walls in the square.  A huge pile of stones and yellowish subsoil was piled in the corner.  No end of the tunnel could be seen.  The ground gave way under foot revealing a six foot tunnel running parallel to the wall.  That critter doesn't know it yet, but he has crossed a line and war has been declared.  I gave up one of my heads of broccoli to bait the trap.

I also discovered an active hornet's nest under the ramp into the kitchen.  In the past a neighborhood skunk took care of a nest of ill tempered bees for me.  I'm afraid where this one is hanging Ed will have to come to the rescue like he so often does.  Tonight a big yellow moon shines on the garden. Tomorrow looks like another wonderful day to spend in the garden.  What will it be relaxing or infuriating?

Fun In The Sun, But Ready For Frost

Ed and I are having so much fun in the garden, we can hardly keep up with ourselves.  It is warm out  but not hot and the ground is perfect for weeding and planting.  Started on Monday, the planting of onion plants was finished today.  That is some bed of onions!  Perhaps we got a little carried away with the Dixondale catalog.  We are still eating onions from last year. A bed of onions like this is better that money in the bank!  Ed put in a second bed of peas.  To be honest I have kind of lost track of exactly which day he did that.

It is wonderful to be out there in the sunshine.  The tree swallows make a game of flying close to our heads as we work.  They are fantastic flyers and sometimes come very close.  Ed stopped his work for a few minutes to watch a pair mating on a post near where he was working.  It's the same with the hawks that circle overhead that get you to look up from your weeding because of the raucous noises the crows make when they dive at the beautiful hawks.  Sometimes they come close like the tree swallows and sometimes they actually make contact.  They are serious about their attack as they are protecting their nest from real danger.

 I spent part of my day weeding in the shade garden.  One has to watch out for  newly emerging plants, but is is a delightful surprise to find them.  It's not quite as delightful when you uproot something that you are trying to protect.  A few inappropriate works may slip out, but then an undamaged plant is returned to the bed  with an apology. A damaged one is dropped in the compost with a sigh.  You can't garden with out disturbing things.  That goes for both plants and animals.  It goes with the territory.

I love these early spring plants even if they don't last for long.  I worked here as long as I was having fun, but then moved on to a vegetable bed where  I could relax and dig up all the weeds without concern for what might be planted.
Later this afternoon  it will be time to cover our cold sensitive plants . In May a sunny spring day followed by a clear cloudless sky frequently means frost here!

Onions And Muck

The pond muck  sloshed onto the soil turned in easily.  Three passes with the stone fork combined with some rain mixed the muck and the soil.  I was surprised to find bits of broken stone in the muck.  Colored an unusual blue, these stones stand out in the path.  The color may be the result of time buried in the muck or we may have found pieces of locally quarried bluestone.  Muck color is the more likely cause since we have never found any bluestone here.  We will watch to see if the color is permanent.  My fingers were temporarily muck stained when the onions were all planted.  All this playing in the muck did bring back feeling like a  boy playing at pond's edge.

An inverted wire cage provides a grid to quickly mark the planting holes.  We use 6 X 6 inch spacing to allow access for weeding.  The cages protect the young plants from deer foot prints.  When first planted, something pulls the plants from the ground.  We suspect nest building birds but have never seen them in action.  Cages solve both problems.

These Dixondale Farms onion plants work great for us.  Shipping when promised allowed us to prepare the bed and plant the day they were delivered.  With a little help from the weather, we should grow almost an entire year's supply of onions.

Generous numbers of plants formed each sales unit.  The overflow were planted in an adjacent bed.  Row spacing stayed at 6 inches while the distance between the plants dropped to four inches.  A comparison will be made at harvest to see if there is a down side to the closer spacing.  For now all of the onion plants are in the ground.

Working the soil this time of year frequently unearths overwintering hummingbird moth, Hemaris thysbe pupa.  Resenting disturbance, they whip their pointed end wildly about.  We carefully cover them with soil since we delight in finding the flying stage feeding on Monarda flowers.