I spent three hours in the garden today. What a beautiful spring day! I pulled some weeds, cleaned my rock & brick collection that I keep at the fence, and weeded out my stakes and supports. I thinned the spinach and the radishes and trellised the peas. I also planted: fingerling potatoes (finally!), more peas, more carrots, more Swiss Chard. I transplanted the cauliflower, parsley and lettuce I bought earlier this week. Towards the fence, I planted dahlias (Star Elite and Rip City), sunflowers, zinnias and cosmos.
We spent Thanksgiving at our friends’ house and I was on appetizer duty. My daughter and I made these 
Eating from the garden in November – potato leek soup. Leeks, garlic and parsley are home-grown.
Last two cloves of (volunteer) hardneck garlic. Now onto the softnecks.
Leeks and garlic sauteed in butter.
Add potatoes …
… and water , salt and pepper. Simmer for 20 minutes and puree. To be served with chopped parsley, bacon bits and homemade croutons. Yum!
I planted my garlic today after putting in a few hours of community work in the garden. I planted two rows of hardneck (Red Russian) and 3 rows of softnecks (Transsylvania), 7 cloves per row. This is the earliest ever I planted garlic. Normally I wait until the first week of November. But we already had two nights of light frost and the weather the next two weeks looks good (50s and 60s), so the garlic should be able to set some nice roots before winter is here for good.
Today’s harvest: a couple of carrots, parsley, the last two hot peppers, a tiny butternut squash (the foliage was already damaged by frost), and the last dahlia. I pulled all the tomatoes, eggplants, cucumbers, nasturtiums and beans and semi-cleaned the plot to get it ready for planting garlic. I still need to do more weeding, pull the dahlia tubers and will need to get hay to mulch the plot.
Rainbow chard
Brussels sprouts
Mustard greens and baby kale (and weeds)
Today’s harvest: Swiss Chard, Kentucky Wonder pole beans, tomato, eggplant, dahlias.
Baguette with 
I cleaned the cured garlic today and made a small braid with the softnecks and hung it in our pantry. The hardnecks were trimmed and stored in an earthenware crock in the pantry.
Today I pulled all of my garlic. I had a bunch of softnecks but the heads seem smaller than last year. I had planted about 30 cloves in the fall and maybe harvested about 20 heads, so I will plant seed garlic again this fall and not seed from my own garlic stock. I got some very nice big hardneck volunteers from three heads that I had left in the ground by accident last year. They are currently spread to dry and I will gently brush off the dirt after a day or so and hang them to ventilate for a couple of weeks. For the hardnecks, I will cut off the stem and store them in an open ceramic crock or basket in the pantry. For the softnecks I will attempt a 
Nice big hardnecks right after harvest (Red Russian).
Softnecks right after harvest (Transylvania)
Pizza last night with all toppings form the garden (except the cheese of course). I made a 
Garlic scapes right before harvesting about two weeks ago (I kept them in the fridge until now and they were fine).
Garlic scape pesto.
Just before going in the oven.