Weekend

So today when I was at the Farmer’s market I was able to get another variety of garlic, it is called Brown Saxon.  I took a picture with all the info on it and this is what it said “this is a unique Rocambole with large brown cloves; harvests late.  A strong character and great storing qualities”

This gives me 7 varieties now, polish white, McEwen’s red, music, red Russian, northern Quebec, Georgian fire and brown Saxon.  This is all that I am going to grow next year.  My original plan of buying from the Garlic Farm in B.C. has been abandoned.  When I found out that I was able to get some of the varieties I wanted locally I decided I would rather buy it locally and save myself some money even if I couldn’t get all of the varieties I wanted.

I was also talking to the guy that grows it.  He let me know that the Red Russian I bought a couple weeks ago is a purple stripe (wondering if it might be marbled purple stripe). I was also able to get planting and harvesting info.   He also said that he usually plants all of his garlic the week of Thanksgiving.  This year he cut the scapes off around Canada Day.  As well he mentioned that the Music and Red Russian are both very consistent garlic, cut the scapes off and then 2 weeks later they are ready to come out of the garden.  But the northern Quebec is a trickier garlic and you have to watch it more  because it is a later maturing variety and will be a couple weeks later.

Today I also went over the field to check out that garden.  I picked few cucumbers and there are a few left thereon the plants, but they are dying off.  There were tons of cherry tomatoes both red and yellow.  My cousin also wanted to dig up some potatoes.  Now because of the heavy clay soil none of the potatoes have gotten very big, they are all miniature potato size.  We dug up some river john blue, baby reds and one plant of banana fingerling.  The fingerlings only had like 2 potatoes on the whole plant.  Disappointed but not surprised.   There was also one potato plant that was planted in the leaf compost pile.  It was planted a week sooner than everything else but because of the extremely loose soil 2 of the 7 potatoes we got off it were the size of soft balls.  They looked terrific and I let my cousin have them.