Garlic: Planted all today -- all from cloves harvested this year (ie bought none this year)

Having seen several sources say garlic planted earlier in the fall produces bigger bulbs than garlic planted later in the fall, and several local well known sources planting now (or already planted), today I planted all the garlic.  (Fortunately the foundation work finished in time!)

SEED SOURCES:

This year I didn't buy any seed garlic. I just used (a) the cloves from the biggest bulbs (mostly Music, and five cloves of elephant), (b) the corms from this year's and last year's elephant garlic; and (c) the little bulbils that some of the garlic this year had growing in the stem a few inches above ground.

SOIL PREP:

Forked the soil.  Added several buckets of Trail Road compost (a really nice healthy amount, several inches thick), lots of vermiculite (two big stainless steel bowls worth), kelp, az, mrp, and pre-soaked alfalfa.  Mixed it all up with the fork and broke up as many clumps as possible.  With all of this, the garlic bed (which is the entire southeast bed) is quite high, several inches higher than the surround area (which I'll try to raise up next year with more Trail Road compost).

LOCATION AND METHOD -- CORMS:

Method:  For the corms, I messed up with ~half of them by (deliberately) removing the entire outer casing (down to the shiny white raw innermost bit) instead of just the hardest outer casing.  (Googled after, too late, oops.)  The other half I removed just the hard outer casing which it turns out is the correct way to do it.  It was very easy, just used kitchen scissors to knick away at the stick-out side portions and chipped the hard casing away.  Easy, but tedious.  Didn't pre-soak them at all.  ~9 per square foot plus a few popped in here and there randomly.

Location:  In the southeastmost section are the 2025 corms, leading into the 2026 corms, all are along the southmost edge of the garlic bed, one foot "deep" (not deep into the soil!) by ~3 feet across.  The ones that I peeled the inner layer off (oops) are the front most ones, with the ones behind them being the ones that I properly removed only the hard outer layer.  All went ~an inch or so deep.

LOCATION AND METHOD -- BULBILS:

Method:  Nothing fancy, treated them the same as cloves, just didn't plant them as deep since they're way smaller.

Location:  Almost all are along the south edge, to the west of the corms.  A wide square foot, so 1.~2 square feet or so, ~20 of them in there.  Also, ~6 found later the same today are popped in along the west edge of the main Music patch.

LOCATION AND METHOD:  ELEPHANT CLOVES

Method:  Basic garlic style.  Planed several inches deep.

Location:  These are huge cloves!  5 of them in total planted, from the biggest/healthiest bulb harvested this year.  Four are along the east edge, north of the corms, in one square foot, and one is tucked behind them along the east edge.

LOCATON AND METHOD;  MUSIC CLOVES

Method:  Basic garlic style.  Planed several inches deep.

Location:  These are huge cloves!  60 cloves in total planted!  All are from the biggest bulbs harvested this year, and only nice big chonky cloves (a very few of the cloves in the biggest bulbs weren't big and chonky enough so I used them for cooking instead of for seed).

FINAL NOTES

After a good watering, covered them with burlap to try to keep out squirrels etc.  Note:  While planting I used short fences (held down with a few stones) to demarcate corms from bulbils etc, BUT I had to lift them out after when putting down the burlap, so this messed me up, so the fences may not be in the exact right location and I took out the panel dividing the elephant corms from the music bulbils because I lost track of where the division was.  Hopefully it will be obvious next summer which are which!  Also -- even though I saved the best and biggest to plant, there was still lots of harvested garlic to use for cooking!  Last year I sowed about 55 cloves, so hopefully this year's 60 + 5 will be good too.  (The corms won't be harvestable until 2028.)

See also my paper "map" of what's where, on the fridge and emailed to myself this evening.

Excited to see how this does next year!

Saved seeds from neighbour's green/yellow tomatillos which are much better than the "purple" one I grew this year

Saved seeds from neighbour's green/yellow tomatillos, which are much better than the "purple" one I grew this year.  My "purple" tomatillos from the Amazon-bought seeds are hardly purple and just aren't ripening, so they're bitter and will likely all need to be tossed.

The neighbour's green (yellow when ripe) tomatillos are delicious though!  So I took a couple of her fallen very-ripe tomatillos, opened them out, squished out the seeds, put them in a jar with water, swirled it around; then the seeds immediately fall to the bottom so I right away gently poured the water out and poured the seeds onto a paper towel to dry.  (ie didn't do the fermentation method)  I'll use these seeds for next year's tomatillos and will toss the "purple" Amazon-bought seeds.

Picked up 14 buckets of Trail Road compost ("potting soil") -- spring is much better than fall

Went to Trail Road today to get some soil for the yard, especially for the garlic area but got car-full.

Today the pile was closer to the road and was massively overgrown with weeds at the top, but they hadn't started dropping seeds yet.  But the pile was pretty hard, not like the gorgeous stuff of the spring.  I imagine this pile has been sitting here for quite a while since it's not the busy season.

14 un-compressed buckets of very dry soil (it hasn't rained in ~2 weeks) landed just shy of the minimum.  It was 230 kg or 507 pounds.

Saved 1 bucket to put in the basement (adding to a few buckets there from the spring haul).  The other 13 buckets were enough to put a nice layer in the eastmost "square" plus one or two buckets stored under the vertical structure to disperse in the spring.

Ideally would like to get another load for the yard next spring but won't bother going back this fall given how dense/old the pile is, especially as those weeds will start dropping their seeds all over it at some point.

GA: Results of popcorn ultra-early harvesting experiment = flop

The cob of popcorn that I harvested on August 20th after the tassels had turned mostly brown/crispy but everything else was still very green, and then placed loosely in a paper bag, ended up completely drying up whereby there were no kernels to be had whatsoever.

The cob of popcorn that I harvested on August 28th, in a similar condition as the August 20th cob noted above, was in a bit better shape in that there were some kernels, but they are tiny.  I decided to try popping the tiny kernels on the stove, just to see if they're usable at all.  Results:  No good -- they just burned without popping.

GA: Birds ate several of the popcorn cobs; have been harvesting gradually before birds or future raccoons get them

^^^

GA: Started early havesting but probably still a bit too early

My first potatoes harvested were about a week ago, to use in a recipe with zucchinis since the zucchini plants have been dropping to SVB etc.  Then harvested some more today, but still just a little corner of one of the patches.  The potatoes are so far medium size, no big chonkers yet.  Hopefully they'll keep growing, but the plants are definitely dying back, with some stems completely dried out.

GA: Broccoli harvest definitely slowing, but still some

^^^

GA: FOY leeks harvested

Not a ton of them are on the thicker side, but hopefully they'll still grow.  Today harvested 5 of the bigger ones, to have with potato leek soup.  Of the 5, one had bolted so it was useless.  Since the all the leeks are under cover, not sure how many others may have bolted, we'll see later on...

GA: FOY sweet corn harvested; but a bunch of them have zero corns forming

Ooooh YUMMMMM the sweet corn is delicious!  So crispy and perfect!  

BUT a whole bunch of the sweet corn patch has stalks with nothing growing -- the tassels thing at the top yes, but no hint of any cobs whatsoever.  Seems to be a lot of the earlier round of sowing -- maybe too shaded???

GA: Sweet corn Peaches and Cream started developing ears 1-2 weeks ago; Golden Bantam not yet; Popcorn just now starting to develop

Probably eating corn within a week!  Peaches and Cream ears definitely starting to fill in!

GA: Scotia are ripening (plants diseased like the other tomatoes but still producing)

^^^

GA: Onions horrible, all dying / several already dead :(((

Alas!  Onions horrible, all dying / several already dead :(((  Pretty sure it's due to the leek moth.  (Though I poked around in some of the dying/dead "green"s and didn't find anything but I'm guessing they've already left or whatever.)

Even the covered ones, because (a) one of the covers developed a large gaping hole a 4-6ish weeks ago that I never bothered doing anything about, and (b) the other covered area I had removed the cover for a week or twoish a while ago (because I think it too had broken) before deciding to put back the cover.  So I'm pretty sure the leek moth got all up in both of the covered onion beds.

But yeah, basically all onions look awful with thoroughly dead/dying "green"s (more like "brown"s).  And, a surprising amount flopped over / got the crick in the neck which means they won't grow any more, yet they're very small. Harvested some of the worst today.  I mean, there's still a mini harvest as they did bulb up to varying extents, but definitely small small small.  Some others not yet harvested are relatively bigger but still doesn't look like any will grow to nice sizes.

So!  Next year I will grow all onions under proper cover for the whole season.  (Except maybe one foot uncovered as a comparison.)

GA: Southern bean patch has anthracnose -- ~half beans inedible

The southern bean patch has anthracnose -- at least I'm pretty sure that's what it is -- the beans are covered in very unappealing brown spots.  About half the beans in this patch are so badly affected that they're completely inedible.  Some aren't affected at all.

The other bean patches including L's don't seem to be affected.

Still getting plenty enough harvest for several batches of the bread recipe.

GA: 2 zukes are wilting!!! SVB? ==> Update: No, not SQB!

Feels early for SVB but maybe not... I'll cut open the stems once they're fully gone, to see.

Update on August 1st:  Pulled one of those plants and inspected the stem -- not seeing any SVB evidence.  There was, however, a squash bug on it.  Pretty sure it was some type of disease, which is supported by the leaves not actually having gotten wilty as when it's SVB, but rather drying/dyring in a curled/crispy way.  Haven't pulled the second affected plant yet bec it's still hanging on for now...

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.)