July Flowers
Category: Summer
Herbs and Flowers
Garlic Harvest 2024
This morning, I harvested my garlic. It was a good week or two earlier than in previous years, but it seemed ready. An empty-nester now, I grew less than in previous years and harvested 19 softnecks and 12 hardnecks. I will leave them on a tarp to dry for a few days (on my back porch out of the sun) and then brush off the soil and hang them in my back hallway to fully cure. After they have fully cured (in three to four weeks), I will clean them well and braid the softnecks and destem the hardnecks. I will use up the latter first as they do not keep as well as softnecks.
Update: The next day, in the late evening, I cleaned them lightly and hung them to dry. There are four bundles, the two shown below are the hardnecks.
First Zucchini
I harvested my first zucchini (zucchino?) yesterday and turned it into a roasted vegetable goat cheese pizza. I roasted broccolini, red bell pepper, red onion, Brussels sprouts and zucchini, and spread those on a garlic bechamel. Topped it all with goat cheese and fresh mozzarella. (Recipe from the cookbook Eat Delicious). The pictures do not do it justice. It was delicious!
First Mini-Bouquet
Garden Plot Clean-Up
This morning, I spent a couple of hours weeding my plot and spreading salt marsh hay that I had left over from weeding the outside garden bed and fertilizing and mulching it earlier this morning. The outside bed is now pretty much all set until the fall, when I am hoping to get spring bulbs in the ground. I mulched that bed heavily, hoping to suppress the weeds. Fingers crossed.
My plot is now ready for summer. The zucchini are coming in, the first tomatoes are showing up on the vine, the leeks have recovered, the winter squash is spreading, and the garlic is almost ready for harvest.
Communal Garden Bed Progress
It has been about a month since we started planting the new communal garden bed outside of our community garden. The area was cleared in early May, the Southwest Corridor Park crew built the garden bed border, and we spread compost. Planting for this season is now pretty much completed. We mulched the left side of the bed (native perennials) and the blueberry bush (very accessible on the very right of the bed close to the path) with bark mulch and will now mulch the rest of the bed with hay. We fertilized once and will fertilize a second time in the next few days. The plants are coming along nicely, even though we had to relinquish some plants (mainly kale, but also Zinnias, marigolds and other flowers) to the resident rabbits.
Red Currants
The red currants are ready, so I harvested around 4 cups this morning. Cleaned them (which despite using the speedy fork method seemed to take forever) and froze 3 cups in a Ziploc bag to be turned into red currant crumb bars later. None of my kids are in town at the moment, so I will make the crumb bars later this summer. I will enjoy the remaining currants macerated over yogurt or ice cream, or eat them fresh.
There are still tons of currants waiting to be harvested. I will harvest and freeze more in the next few days.
Midsummer Plot
Today, I spent three hours weeding my plot. Way overdue. I kind of had neglected my plot a bit in the past few weeks as I was more focused on the communal bed outside of the garden. It was a cool (70F) and overcast day, a welcome break between the heatwave that ended yesterday and the upper 80s predicted for the next coming days. Perfect weeding weather. Things are coming along nicely with the hot weather and now with a few days of showers and thunderstorms. I had fertilized the tomatoes with banana peel water last week, and they seem to have doubled in height since.
