Garlic Harvest

Jo is digging our garlic.  As with most things that happen around here, we're getting the garlic out of the ground a little behind schedule. That's really not a problem since our weather has been so dry.  Wetter weather would have caused the garlic bulbs to rot.  Voles and mice love dining on our potatoes while they are still in the ground, but don't care for garlic.

Rusty and Bucket think they deserve a share of everything harvested in the garden.  They are going through the motions of begging for garlic, but didn't really put up too much of a fuss since even Bucket won't munch out on a garlic bulb.

Jo is heading back to the garden cart with another handful of garlic.  We grow an older stiffneck (or hardneck) variety.  Our original bulbs were a gift from a friend.  I'm not certain of the exact variety, though it's probably a Rocambole.  As this garlic reaches maturity, it sends up shoots.  Tiny garlic bulbs (called scapes) form at the end of the shoots.  When the shoots first appear, they are curved into a circle.  As the garlic matures, the stems gradually straighten.   At full maturity, they are pointing straight up.  You are supposed to pinch off the scapes.  This secondary means of reproduction doesn't benefit the gardener and is said to rob some of the plants resources that would otherwise go into producing a larger underground bulb.  We failed to pinch off all the scapes this year.  In our very unscientific experiment, neither Jo nor I could see a difference in bulb size between plants with and without scapes.

A small part of our garlic harvest.  The bulbs now need to dry a bit more.  Jo will cut off the stems and select some of the cloves for replanting.  Here in Arkansas, we plant garlic in the fall.  The plants come up and then go dormant over winter.  Once spring arrives, the garlic begins growing again and completes its life cycle.  We'll use some of the garlic fresh, but most will go into the deep freeze providing us with a year around supply.

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Garlic Harvest

Potato Harvest

New Potatoes

Jo and I dug 67 pounds of potatoes Friday evening. Our harvest would probably have been closer to 80 pounds had the mice/voles not munched out on so many spuds. We were a little late digging our potatoes this year because we were gone or busy getting ready to leave when they should have been dug. Leaving them in the ground longer than necessary no doubt contributed to the lose to the rodents.

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Potato Harvest

Garden 2009: Jo Weeding Our Strawberries

Jo weeding a strawberry bed.

(Photo:  Marvin Smith on 11/7/09)

It may be late fall.
The temperatures are cooler.
The days are shorter.
All the trees' leaves are on the ground.
But the weeds are still growing.

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Garden 2009: Jo Weeding Our Strawberries

Fall Garden 2009: Broccoli

Broccoli we're raising and planning to butcher and eat for Thanksgiving dinner.

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Fall Garden 2009: Broccoli

Garden 2009: First Frost in the Fall Garden

Fall Garden 2009: Our first frost was this morning (10/18/09) so Jo and I covered the wire hoops over our fall garden bed with plastic. Around mid-day Jo opened up the ends of the tunnel so everything inside wouldn't be cooked by today's full sunshine.

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Garden 2009: First Frost in the Fall Garden

Jimson Weed Seedpod

Jimson Weed seed pod.

From Wikipedia: Datura stramonium, known by the common names jimson weed, angel's trumpet, devil's weed, thorn apple, tolguacha, Jamestown weed, stinkweed, datura, moonflower, and, in South Africa, malpitte and mad seeds is, along with Datura metel (zombie cucumber), a common weed in the Solanaceae (the nightshade family). It contains tropane alkaloids that are sometimes used as a hallucinogen. The active ingredients are atropine, hyoscyamine and scopolamine which are classified as deliriants, or anticholinergics. Due to the elevated risk of overdose in uninformed users, many hospitalizations, and some deaths, are reported from recreational use.


Sunday, 9/27/09:

Sunday was another good day for being outside. I mowed again. With any luck, I might be able to finish the garden area tomorrow. Jo finished weeding our fall garden bed.

During the evening, I replaced the washing machine supply hoses. The hose on the hot water side sprang a leak while Jo was washing this morning. (A good reminder that one really should shut off the washing machine water supply valves when leaving on a trip.) I also replace the top thermostat on our hot water heater. Most of the time, it worked fine, but every once in a while the water coming out of our hot water heater was way too hot.

Another cold front is on the way down. It's approach caused a moderately gusty south wind and rapidly rising temperatures today. The temp climbed all the way up to 86°F/30°C and was still 77°F/25°C at midnight. The approaching front is not forecast to be dry.

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Jimson Weed Seedpod

Zinnia Jungle

Here at season's end our zinnias are beginning to look a little tired, but are still producing a few new bloom. Every year the zinnias reseed themselves. Of course, they don't always sprout exactly where we want them, but we let as many grow as possible. In the beginning of the season, I try to keep them contained and keep the path between beds open, but by season's end they've multiplied, grown tall, fallen over and have become a zinnia jungle.

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Zinnia Jungle

Garden 2009: Fall Garden

We planted a small fall garden for the first time in several years. It's doing well, but we're getting way behind with routine garden upkeep because our weather has been so wet. There are places where water is still standing out in the garden.

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Garden 2009: Fall Garden

Begging For Zucchini

What happens when you take a short trip and leave the garden unattended for a couple of days? Monster zucchinis try to take over the place. Rusty and Bucket like raw zucchini and know Jo usually gives them a slice of the overgrown squash before tossing the rest in the compost. They are waiting not very patiently for their treat.

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Begging For Zucchini

Garden 2009: Okra and Sweet Potatoes

Our okra is a little slow in starting to produce this year. We've only harvested a few pods thus far. Okra is a southern crop that always seems to thrive in the heat of summer. I wonder if this summer has been too mild and pleasant for it to do well?

The sweet potato vines have filled their enclosure. I hope they are making lots of sweet potatoes underground. Our rabbits do a good job of keeping the vines pruned so they done sprawl all over the garden -- whether we really want them to prune or not.

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Garden 2009: Okra and Sweet Potatoes

Garden 2009: Garlic Planting

In the garden over the past several days:

GARLIC:  Jo planted garlic. Her technique is to use a spacing board and lay out all the cloves. Then, she uses the trowel to plant each clove. There's only one problem with this technique: Canine garden buddies. When Jo's back was turned, the dogs kept stealing garlic cloves. The didn't eat the garlic, just carried it off and played with it.

Here in the south, garlic is planted in late summer. It sprouts and the plants grow to a modest size before winter when they go dormant. As soon as the weather warms up in the spring, the garlic begins growing again. It's dug in mid-summer.

GREEN BEANS: Jo picked more and got them into the freezer.

YELLOW SQUASH AND ZUCCHINI: Mother Hubbard's cupboard was bare; ours is full of yellow squash and zucchini. Jo has tried freezing them in the past, but when thawed they are fall-apart mushy. She read somewhere online that they remain more firm if sliced and steam blanch instead of blanching in boiling water. She experimented with freezing a couple of pints using that method. We'll see.

CUCUMBERS: Production is far surpassing what I can eat. (Jo doesn't care for cucumbers.) Jo's intending to make some quickie pickles. We have quarts of regular canned pickles still left over from years past.

BED MULCHING: I've got three of the four fallow beds heavily mulched with grass clipping. I spread a layer of compost followed by a layer of manure. Then, I cover the beds with a layer of newspaper with the grass clipping on top. Our plan is that all we'll need to do next spring is pull back the mulch and plant. The possible flaw in this plan is: Armadillos. Armadillos love the bugs and earthworms that thrive under the mulch. If an armadillo discovers the beds and goes on a overnight feeding frenzy, the beds will look as if they've been tilled. Later in the fall, I can cover the beds with chicken wire we have for that purpose, but for now the beds have to stay uncovered so I can keep the weeds and especially Bermuda grass from growing into the beds from the aisles.

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Garden 2009: Garlic Planting

Garden 2009: Green Beans and Climbing Rabbits

Our first picking of green beans should occur later today or maybe tomorrow.  If we want to harvest any green beans, we must grow them inside a welded wire enclosure. Otherwise, the rabbits would eat them down to the ground.

The wire hoops really aren't quite large enough for the beans, so they send stems and leaves out through the mesh. In the past, the cottontails have done a very good job of keeping the ground level protruding stems and leaves trimmed back to the wire. This year, the rabbits took their trimming duties one step farther. At least one member of our local rabbit population learned how to either climb the wire or jump up on top of it. We've seen a rabbit sitting up on top of the wire hoops several times. And you can see there are few stems and leaves left sticking outside of the wire. Unfortunately, I seriously doubt we'll ever be able to get close enough to photograph the rabbit in action.

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Garden 2009: Green Beans and Climbing Rabbits

Garden 2009: A Squash Is Born

Summer (Yellow) Squash

And a zucchini too.

Due to our late start and abbreviated garden, we have three beds we are not using this summer. Two of those beds have been fully weeded and we are working on the third. My current project is getting these three beds heavily mulched. Our plan is to just leave them fallow until next spring. The mulch will keep the beds from refilling with weeds. They should be ready to plant with little effort next spring. The one possible major flaw in this plan is if an armadillo decides to search for insects in one (or more) of these fallow beds. After an armadillo roots around to his/her satisfaction, a bed ends up looking as if it's been tilled.

Garden 2009: A Squash Is Born

Garden 2009: Mulch

Contender bush beans mulched with grass clippings.

This week I got both the green bean and sweet potato beds mulched with grass clippings.  Mulch is essential to keep the moisture in and the weeds out.

Many experts recommend against using grass clippings for mulch.  I will willingly concede that grass clipping are far from the best mulch, they are what I've got, so I use them.

Grass clippings make poor mulch because:

• They compact and, therefore, break down slowly.  (True, but here in the south with our high temperatures and long growing season that's not a problem.  By fall even grass clipping mulch will need to be reapplied.)

• Grass clippings form a compact sheet that will shed rainfall.  (True, but we don't usually get a lot of summer rainfall anyway.  Drip irrigation hoses under the mulch provide water to our garden plants.)

• Grass clippings import weed seeds into the garden.  (True, but so do most affordable, organic mulching mediums -- like hay.  The trick is to keep the beds mulched all the time, a trick we almost never accomplish so we pull a lot of weeds until we can get the beds mulched again.)

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Garden 2009: Mulch

Garden 2009: Zucchini Unveiled

Jo planted three hills of squash on 6/19: Two yellow summer squash and one zucchini. She built row cover huts to protect the little squash plants once they sprouted. The huts provides some protection from the intense summer sun, but more importantly, they keep squash bugs and squash vine bore moths off the plants for a little while. Both pests are inescapable here if you garden without using pesticides as we do. The plants will eventually succumb to the bores or the bacterial wilt spread by the squash bugs. The goal is to get as much production out of the squash plants as possible before they die.

All the squash sprouted well and by 7/6 the zucchini filled its row cover hut. The summer squash plants are smaller and can probably remain covered until they bloom. They must be uncovered then so they can be pollinated and produce fruit.

Jo uncovered the zucchini on 7/8. They now on their own against the squash vine bores and squash bugs.

I'm not a big fan of summer squash or zucchini. Both are okay if stir fried with enough other veggies to cover their taste. Jo likes both so we grow them. We also grow cucumbers which Jo doesn't care for.

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Garden 2009: Zucchini Unveiled

Gardening: Setting Out Transplants

                                                                                                        (Photo taken on 4/08/09 by Marvin)

Gardening is a great hobby.  I especially enjoy taking photos of Jo working.  Here she is setting out cauliflower and broccoli transplants.

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Gardening: Setting Out Transplants

Journal: Sunday, 10/26/08

 Morning:

►  68ºF/20ºC @ 10 AM. Temperature climbing fast with moderate south wind blowing. More "seasonable" temperatures on the way, though. A dry cold front is supposed to bring 30 for tonight and 20s for tomorrow night. Our chilliest temperatures of this fall.

►  Noon: Sun shining brightly in a cloudless sky. South wind picking up a little. (76ºF/24ºC)

Afternoon: 


►  With below freezing temperatures in our forecast, Jo did a large, last harvest of tomatoes (mostly green) and peppers. The peppers plants are currently looking better than they have all season, but won't be in a day or two. (75ºF/23ºC @ 3 PM.)

Growing peppers is usually a no-brainer. You just stick the plants in the ground and they grow, producing lots of tasty chilies -- not this year in our garden, though.  The poblano chilies eventually produced a decent crop of peppers late in the seasons.  We got a handful of jalapenos and no bell peppers.

The cause of our pepper growing difficulties is a mystery to me, but as you can see by looking behind the poblanos in the foreground, the other pepper plants barely grew any larger than the transplants we set out into the garden in June.  Several times during the growing season, the plants looked as if they were going to take off and start growing, but then they'd suffer a set back and lose most of their leaves.  Now that we are at the very end of the growing season, the peppers are looking better than they have all summer.  The bells even have dozens of tiny peppers on them.  A lot of good that's going to
do with below freezing temperatures in our forecast.


Another concession made to the upcoming freezing temperatures was bringing a hanging basket of impatiens inside.  These were another of the dollar-a-plant closeout bargains Jo purchased from the grocery store in early summer.  Normally, we leave annuals outside to suffer their predetermined fates in late fall, but these impatiens were looking so beautiful Jo just could not stand to let them freeze.  She brought them inside even though with all the other houseplants now inside the house, we really do not have room for them.  They are sitting atop Rusty's dog crate where they will no doubt fade rapidly in our too dark house.  Still, they will be pretty to look at for several days.

►  Back from PM walk. Methinks the wind direction may be shifting to the north. Kinda swirling around in our holler. (72ºF/22ºC @ 5 PM)

►  Gusty north wind has dropped the temperature to 56ºF/13ºC @ 8 PM. Temp heading down to 34ºF/1ºC tonight NOAA says. I doubt it gets quite that cold up here on the ridge.

Follow my updates on 

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Journal: Sunday, 10/26/08

Green Beans Escaping

The wire hoops we installed over our green beans have done a great job at keeping the deer and rabbits out, but are useless at keeping the beans in.

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Green Beans Escaping

Gardening Woes

Removing all the earthworms prior to tilling can be a challenge. We eventually had to use a come-along to extract this big fellow.

Gardening Woes