Garlic in the ground and other stories from the yard

Finished up garlic planting for this year.  I meant to cut back significantly on how much I planted last year.  The jury is out on how much less I planted because I can't find my records.  I think it was in the neighborhood of 550 cloves, but could be as high as 650. This year's total came in at 512.  We've got a lot of garlic left, I think next year we won't hold back on eating green garlic next year.

In an attempt to not loose the garlic map for change, I've drawn them out in MSPaint.  See, I'm an artist!

The yard as it exists in the fall of 2013.  All of the brown squares represent existing beds ready for 2014.  The bed with the brown stripes needs to be built.  The two beds with no fill is the squash hill from 2013.  The 'hill' will be transformed into two large beds for squash or other space intensive crops.

Garlic Beds 1 - 3 are shown below along with three other beds labeled 'fallow'.  They're not truly fallow, they've just got the winter off.  Next year, I'd like them to be a mix of tomatoes, beans, leeks, herbs, carrots, celeriac, and some pest detering flowers.  The tomatoes this year were planted in beds by themselves and some leeks.  However, they grew so fast that they dramatically overshadowed the leeks to the point that they barely grew.  Next year, the tomatoes will be split between three beds and planted in the back third.  The front two-thirds will be dedicated to shorter crops.

Garlic Beds 1 & 2 were new this year, built in the spring with the help of Ben.

Garlic Bed 3 was the first bed I built on the hill (in either 2011 or 2012).  It is  

need of some maintenance as the posts holding it in place have started to ror.  

Garlic Bed 4 was going to be a bed of tomatoes and squash this year, but my garlic plans spun out of control again.  Ah well, you win some, you plant more garlic some.  Like Garlic Bed 3, this one is also in need of some maintenance.  When I built it, I made it a little too wide, so it's really hard to get to the middle.  I'm contemplating splitting it in half (and maybe narrowing it a little too).

That's it on the garlic.

Another post will be coming soon for seed selection for next year.  I'm going to try to keep purchases at a minimum.  There's two varieties of squash I want to try, otherwise I'm planting what I've already got.  I'm going to try my hand at peppers and tomatoes again, but on a limited basis.  Try with a small number and figure it out, then try to scale up.

Also on the agenda for next year:  low tunnels and row covers.  Being up here in the hills means a late start and an early end to the growing season.  I need to do some kind of season extension, though on a limited scale.

Finally for next season, I'll be working on fruits.  I want to get more blueberries, move the strawberries, add another couple of apple trees (and maybe some pears) and cultivate the raspberries that are already in the yard.

That's it for now.

Planting garlic for 2014

Not much to report right now, other than I got the first half of my garlic planted.  249 cloves planted so far:

Rosewood (ARK) - 65

Conway Russian Red (ARK) - 75

Spanish Roja (Greenfield Farm) - 77

Georgian Fire (Greenfield Farm) - 32

It took me just a couple of hours this afternoon.  I guess I should have a feeling of accomplishment, but instead I keep on thinking about how much is left to do and how I should've done it weeks ago.

Tomorrow, I'm hoping to get rest of it planted.  I've got 100+ cloves of mixed types to grow for next year, however I think a lot of it isn't viable.  It came out of the beds where nearly everything was lost to rot and a lot of the cloves are discolored and shrunken,  I'm going to try planting it anyway, much of it under the apple trees.

Some of what I'm planting is the topset from softneck garlic.  I'm wondering what it will do and how long it will take to form full heads.  I'm planting two bulbs grown from topsets last year.  I think it'll take two or three seasons to get viable heads out of them.  My (crack-pot) theory is that the topsets will produce garlic better adapted to the climate and soil here on the hill.  Well, we'll see in a couple of years.

Garlic Harvest Report 2013

It's hard to believe more than a year and half has passed since my last update, but its true.  Since my last update a few things have happened:

• Liz and I decided to have a kid
• Liz and I got engaged
• Liz and I found out she was pregnant
• I turned 37
• Liz graduated from grad school
• Liz and I got married
• I started running
• River was born
• I ran my first 5k and 10k races

And that's just the big stuff that I can think of right now, who knows how much other stuff I'm forgetting right now.

Anyway, I can't find all my notes from last year's planting (fall 2012), so I've got to guess at how much I planted for my harvest report.

Of the garlic I saved, I have only a rough guess at how much I actually planted. I harvested 153 heads of saved garlic.  40 heads are categorized as 'unknown' because I lost the map to the bed.  113 heads were harvested of Siberian Purple.  This strain of Siberian Purple is the third generation grown by me.  I'm tempted to start referring to it as Buckland Purple.  Of the 113 heads, about 10 were planted in the uppermost bed behind the house, the other 100 were planted on one of the side beds.  The heads harvested from the upper bed were approximately two to three times larger than the heads in the side bed.  

The 'unknown' garlic is probably less than 50% of what I planted.  By 'probably' I mean definitely.  I'm guessing I planted somewhere between 80-100 cloves.

I tried several new varieties this year, as well as some types I've grown before, but from new sources or in a different bed.  In 2012, we tried Music and Rosewood, however we had horrible problems with rot.  We planted them again this year, but in different beds.  Music still suffered significant (tragic even) losses to rot (more than 50%).  The Rosewood did well, but still had problems with rot (14%).  The 'new' varieties had mixed results.  Overall there was significant loss due to rot (35%), but many of the heads produced were large and well formed.

To sum up, I'm estimating I planted 550 cloves and the total harvest is somewhere around 360 (count right now is 367).  Over the course of the summer, several heads were harvested, somewhere around 5.  That puts loss at about 35%, by far the worst year so far.  Much of the problem with rot this year was likely due to three factors:

• Late harvesting - I waited probably 10 days too long to harvest.  Had I pulled the garlic earlier, the heavy rains in the middle of July would've not been an issue.
• Heavy soil / poor drainage -  The beds used this last year have very heavy soil in them and are about 6" deep before hitting the fill dirt/rock.  I would think that this would result in beds that drain pretty well, but I'm left wondering if I need to amend the soil with some lighter agents.
• Too thick mulch - In the ever lasting battle with weeds, I left the mulch on too thick over the summer.  Next year, I will pull all the mulch and re-mulch with fresh straw in the spring.  The fresh layer will be just thick enough suppress weed growth. 

A lot of the garlic is still drying, going on two weeks at this point and not even close to dry for bigger heads of Rosewood, Conway Red and Music.  The smaller heads and the softneck are pretty much dry, but until I work out storage, they're staying outside to continue drying.  Next up will be sorting for planting and storage.  I should have plenty for planting and will likely be able to give a good amount away, but I'm worried about storage.  Since much of the garlic stayed in the ground too long, the papers are thin.

This year the garden's productivity is looking fair, but it's disappointing considering the amount of work I've put into it.  I think I've learned a good bit this last year, so next year I should be getting closer to what I want, a garden that is semi-automated.  Have the beds built, have a regular rotation of crops and have my regular varieties selected for seed saving.  Starting next year, I'd like to plant 90% saved garlic.  The year following I'd like to save squash seeds.  Tomatoes and peppers I'm still working on starting successfully, so those will be a while yet.

So, that's that.  Approximately 367 heads of garlic harvested and drying.  Of that 367, about 70 are cleaned and ready for consumption.  The rest are clean, but need to be trimmed and sorted for planting.