Today I harvested my garlic. It was a good year, based on the amount and the size of the heads. Now they are drying a bit on the porch for a couple of days and then will be cleaned and cured in the back hallway. I am guessing I got about 50 to 60 heads, both hardnecks and softnecks. This should last us throughout the year.
… and last lettuce (for now). I also pulled some more onions. The garlic is almost ready. I spent a couple of hours in the garden this morning weeding and trellising the cucumbers. I also planted more beans. Only a few came up and most of them had their little leaves nibbled off. I am blaming the woodlice, of which I have many in my plot. It is probably all the decaying wood from the plot borders that keeps them happy (as apparently are my tender seedlings).
Spent some time in the garden this beautiful Saturday morning harvesting almost all of the remaining lettuce and planting pole beans, more rainbow carrots (some I sowed earlier have actually come up, yay!) and three more tomato plants (Paul Robson, Jaune Flamme and Black Krim). The garden plot is getting there, but most plants are still small because I did not really plant anything until we had water about a month ago.
Things are happening fast now in the garden. We had some good rain a few days ago and it has been pretty hot. Everything is growing well. The squash has been taking off:
I also harvested the first Chiogga beets. So pretty! We had them shaved with salad for dinner tonight. Delicious.
I harvested a nice bunch of overwintered leeks, a big head of lettuce and some volunteer hard-neck garlic that grew in the wrong spot. The strawberries are from a plot neighbor.
I spent three hours in the garden this morning weeding and pulling the mint that had taken over the better part of the back of my plot. I tied the asparagus and planted more Chiogga beets and a few dahlias, marigolds and cosmos. I also had meant to sow pole beans, carrots and more lettuce (in between the tomatoes so it can grow in the shade) but forgot, ha!
The garlic will be ready in a few weeks and I will need to harvest all the lettuce very soon. I also need to take out all those volunteer onions. The squash and cucumbers have settled in nicely, the chard and beets are looking good as are the new leeks. The kale is being eaten by something, but seems to manage to survive. Quite a few nasturtiums are coming up as well. The tomatoes have some flowers but not very many. I am worried that I overfertilized again, despite only using seaweed emulsion (once!) and sparingly so. Fingers crossed.
It has been a good year for lettuce. I have about a dozen heads still in the plot. The weather is supposed to be hot the next ten days – upper eighties with hardly any rain, so we will have a lot of salads for dinner.
I had a very late start gardening this season. We only got water in the community garden a couple of weeks ago and I delayed planting fearing COVID-19 might prevent us from gardening this year altogether. I have most things planted now, however. But because the seedlings spent their time in pots on my porch until now, they are still very small. Plus, I grew all of them from seed, minus the leeks and some herbs. Today, I put in more squash and more eggplants. I also fertilized my plants with seaweed emulsion (and repaired the water hose).
I had to pull some overwintered onions about a week ago in my plot to make room for new plants. They were cured on the porch and now are ready for use.
