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.