Today’s Harvest
Category: Flowers
The Finished Garlic Braid
August
Preparing Garlic for Storage
This morning, I cleaned my garlic and prepared it for storage. As usual, I made a braid from the Transylvania softneck garlic, but this time, I added strawflowers for decoration.
It is my first time growing strawflowers in my garden plot, and I am growing them specifically for this purpose. They just started to bloom, so there will be many more flowers in the next weeks and months. I suspect the final garlic braid will look much more colorful than this first version as I will be adding more flowers.
I also cleaned the Red Russian hardneck garlic. I will leave the stems a bit longer for another couple of weeks before I cut them short. I just want to be sure they are completely dry. Those will then be stored in an open crock in the pantry and will be used up first as they do not keep as well as the softneck garlic. As usual, I saved the largest heads as seed garlic for fall planting – two heads for each type.
Overall, I put 2 lbs. 3 oz. of softneck garlic (17 heads) and 1 lb. 15 oz. of hardneck garlic (15 heads) into storage. One of the hardnecks may have been a softneck, but to be sure, I placed it with the hardnecks to be used up first. 36 heads were harvested overall, from 35 planted.
Pottery and Flowers
I have been taking pottery classes at JP Clay since February. Here are a few recent combos of hand-picked flowers and herbs (from the backyard or community plot) and my hand-made creations.
Communal Bed Update
Yesterday was the last cool-ish day before we are now entering a stretch of days with temperatures in the 90s and mid/upper 80s, so I decided to sort of finalize the preparations for the outside communal flower bed. I spent three hours weeding, sowing (annual & perennial wildflower mix and cosmos), transplanting, and mulching with salt marsh hay. I still have some seedlings that will go in this bed, mainly zinnias and okra.
This year, the bed will look different. We sadly won’t have as many dahlias as last year, and we had to remove the blueberry bush as it had died (probably from overwatering, or from dog traffic …). The walking-path section of the bed is planted with Black-eyed Susans, lavender, many annuals (calendula, hibiscus, nasturtium, zinnias, cosmos, wildflower mix, sweet alyssum, celosia, okra) and a few dahlias. There also is Swiss chard, and a volunteer squash or cucumber, that I transplanted. Most of the plants are still tiny.
In the narrow center part of the bed, we planted tomatoes, hot peppers and several types of basil. The tomatoes are all cherry types, which will make it easier for the neighborhood to enjoy. There is also a healthy sage plant, anise hyssop, marigolds, and a tall yellow-flowering perennial (a donation of which I do not know the name). Towards the fence, we planted two types of climbers.
The perennials corner close to the street is looking really good. Everything came back vigorously, and the Corepsis and Bluestar are flowering. The perennials are interplanted with strawflowers and sweet alyssum, and the calendula self-sowed and will show up in patches throughout the bed.
June Lull
Just five days until the official beginning of summer, and things have been slow in the garden. The weather has been cycling from the mid-60s to the upper 80s back to the low 60s, which has been stressing the plants, so everything seems to grow slower. Nevertheless, the plants are getting bigger, the zucchini is starting to flower, and I have my first summer flowers – self-seeding Calendula (also known as pot marigold). Those happy little flowers will bloom until the first frost.
The lettuces have been benefiting from the cold weather. The tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and basil not so much. In fact, I lost all but one of my slicing cucumber plants. Not sure what happened there. It is going to be warm again starting in two days, with temperatures predicted to be in the mid-90s early next week. I hope the plants can tolerate those changes.
All Planted
This morning, I (almost) finished planting my plot. Everything is now in the ground, except the sweet potatoes and okra (I will wait a few more days), and I still have to sow flowers and cilantro. I planted 5 cucamelon plants, 5 pickling cucumbers, 4 slicing cucumbers, 1 zucchini, 4 delicata squash and 3 butternut squash. I also planted two jalapenos, which were a gift. The Sweet Thai basil was planted in between the lettuce seedlings, and the Siam Thai basil along the border of my bed, next to the tomatoes. I also moved some calendulas to different spots in the plot, staked the tomatoes and secured the plants to the stakes with garden velcro. I harvested a handful of strawberries, yay! Usually the slugs, birds or pill bugs get there before I do.
2025 Garden Plot
This morning, I planted my tomatoes (11 plants total, 8 varieties). I interplanted them with Italian basil (6 plants) and marigolds (5 plants). I also sowed nasturtium (Alaska Red Shades). I still have to plant the Thai basil, leeks, curcubites and flowers (strawflowers, gomphrena) as well as sow cilantro and flowers (borage, cosmos, zinnias, more nasturtium). I also harvested my two overwintered leeks. The rhubarb is still going strong (three harvests so far), the garlic looks great and the shallots are coming up as well.