Elephant garlic summary

Summarizing this year's Elephant garlic:

Last year I planted 4 elephant bulbs in the Music section.  Only one or two of them went into cloves, the others are the one big "clove".  All had the little bulbil things too which I'm keeping separately to do something with.

Additionally, ~5 or 6 volunteers came up this year in last year's garlic bed.  All but one of those were great big bulbs with cloves!  Just one was the single big "clove".  That's fun!

I've kept the corms to plant this fall.  From what I understand, next year the corns will form the one single big "clove" (a "round") -- then to pull it and cure it, then plant that round in the fall, then the following year it should split into a nice big head of elephant garlic.

Garlic harvest complete = 53 bulbs in all (excluding Elephant), which had cost $29.73 incl tax, so $0.57 per harvested bulb ---- didn't cover them at all

Harvested the rest of the Music garlic before a rainy period arrives next week

In total, the Music garlic yielded 53 bulbs, almost all of which are decent size, some of which are quite nice and big.

Given they cost $29.73 last fall, that's a cost of $0.57 per harvested bulb (not including the cost of amendments).

Those $29.73 worth of seed last year consisted, after I had broken the bought bulbs into individual cloves, of 31 big cloves and 22 small/medium cloves for a total of 53 cloves planted.  Given I harvested 53 (excluding the volunteer elephant), every clove grew, so that's great.

Oh -- and, I never bothered covering these at all, so it seems the leek moth wasn't an issue this year.

I plan to keep the biggest ones to use as seed garlic this fall to help reduce the cost.  (Google says Music will grow true to type.)  I count 16 nice big Musics harvested, and they seem to have 4 cloves each on average, so that's 64 nice-sized plantable Music cloves -- woo hoo, it wouldn't cost anything!  And that would still leave 37 bulbs to use for cooking.

Now to hope the #$%^&*( foundation gets done this year, and early enough to allow them to be planted this fall...

Stopped doing insect patrols a week or two ago -- will see how long the zukes/cukes last

I just got tired of killing things, plus all the time I spent last year constantly checking for squash bug eggs etc.  When I first uncovered the zukes/cukes I checked a few times for the eggs, and would destroy any cuke beetles.  But for at least the last week or two I stopped.  If I see any squash bugs (have seen a few so far, not many) then I'll deal with them, but not doing the patrols, and not bothering about the cucumber beetles anymore.  Que sera, sera!

GA: Weeding Wednesday -- weeded all exterior paths and full plot -- ~4.5 hours

Today was a big weeding of the east and west exterior paths.  So satisfying after!  Then, wandered the beds to wee those too but they're looking pretty good from previous weedings.

For the exterior paths, I'm learning it's best to let those weeds grow a fair amount because they're a lot easier to pull when a bit bigger and they shade / out-compete other weeds.

GA: OH NO --- PEPPERS DISEASED!!!! LEAVES YELLOWING / FALLING OFF! Some tiny fruit fell!

Argh!!!! Just when I thought the peppers were starting to look good, now the leaves are splotchy/yellowing and falling off!    A couple of home-started plants are 4-5 green peppers each growing nicely but otherwise very sparse.

This includes my home-started and store-bought (all varieties) ----- EXCEPT Witch's Stick which has produced nicely so far...

GA: FOY cucumber -- several more on the way -- BUT LOOKS LIKE DISEASE MAY BE STARTING

Wow, this is the first year of my three at GA that the cukes have looked good!  Today got my first cuke.  

However, some leaves at the bottom are turning brown/crispy... and some are wilting.... So I fear disease will be taking over!

Will see how many cukes I get...

(All cukes at GA are Straight 8 this year.)

GA: ALL 5 cauliflowers bolted -- zero cauliflower harvest :((( (this was Early Snowball) -- Next year will try a heat-tolerant variety

^^^

GA: Pulled two more cauliflowers that bolted / unusable

Only one or two left in the ground still and I'm guessing both of those will bolt next year.

Uncovered backyard zukes

The four backyard zukes, which had been covered until now, are looking wimpy and I haven't been feeling like checking for flowers etc.  So, what the heck, I decided to just remove the cover and que sera sera.

GA: Cucamelons are wimpy because very shaded but they're hanging in there...

Hoping once they grow more upward and get out of the shade maybe they'll be able to do something... for now they're very wimpy.  I gave them a tomato cage to climb.

GA: Cucumber plants looking good so far! Very vigorous! (All are Straight 8 variety)

The cucumber beetles are there too, but wow, the first two years at GA my cukes (Eureka) all did horrendously.  With how well these Straight 8s are looking, maybe I'll actually get a decent GA harvest of cukes this year... or will the cucumber beetles be their detriment?  I'm hopeful that the long period of being covered will help.  And they are on the vertical fence post thing again this year.

GA: All zukes are now un-covered

Decided to remove ALL of the covers from the GA zukes, even the ones that aren't close to producing.

Several have been uncovered for a few weeks now.  Have seen definitely cucumber beetles and a few squash bugs.  I haven't been spending tons of time checking for insects like I did last year but do check every now and then and remove.

Harvested ~half the garlic -- the two test scapes are straight up

 Harvested ~half the garlic -- the two test scapes are straight up.

Of the 4 or 5 elephant garlic in the east-most row of the main garlic bed, only one or two went into cloves, the others are the one big clove.  All have the little bulbil things too which I'll keep separately.

The rest of the garlic are all Music.  They're bulbs smaller than I had hoped, but not bad.  I didn't remove any leaves/stem, just brought them inside intact and put them in the basement on the hallway metal rack (but in the basement).

Harvested one of the two Music tests with the scape left on -- it's definitely smaller than average, but is the same size as at least one of the others, so not a big loss from leaving the scape.

GA: Belstar side-shoot harvest ongoing -- very nice!

Today harvested enough side shoots for 1 x walnut-broc recipe and 1 x pea-broc recipe.  

FOY: Harvested one volunteer garlic

Harvested one of the volunteer garlic from last year's elephant garlic bed.  Woo hoo, this one was a very nice size and had cloves.

Waiting a bit longer for the rest of the garlic, as the two next scapes aren't quite fully up yet, and there still aren't three brown leaves at the bottom.

GA: Spooned all onions

I've never ever "spooned" onions before but learned about it recently (though a random YT video I think) so decided to do that.  Just used my finger to ring around each onion to loose things and try to expose the bulb (most have started to bulb out).

Some of them, the ground is SO hard, like cement, once you get below the few cms of compost.  Next year I definitely want to add chopped straw to the soil when tranplanting, to help have a softer soil.

Started rutabaga in PT

First time trying rutabaga.  I'll start them in PTs, then put the seeds into the garden (GA) -- some where the pulled bolted cauliflower was, others in random spots probably.

FOY / GA: First zuke of the year harvested

Several of the GA zukes are looking great and harvested the first zuke today.  None of of the four backyard zukes are though -- all looking pretty puny.

GA: A cauliflower has bolted! And tied the leaves of the other four cauliflowers

The one that bolted, the "head" is still very small BUT it went all spikey -- I tied its leaves anyway because why not, but pretty sure that one will be no good.

The other four -- one has a wee head, the others I didn't look closely into but tied them all up, we'll see how it goes.  This week is a mega heat wave so I'm not too confident!

GA: 3rd and 4th Belstar broccoli heads harvested -- still nice and big!

^^^