Peppers and more Garlic

Today I finally harvested the McEwen’s Red garlic from the garden.   This is the garlic that I planted from bulbils in the spring along with Polish White.  In the spring when I planted the bulbils I read that in the first year they should form a single clove.  In the second year if you plant that single clove it should fully form into a full head of garlic.  This is a picture of the 13 heads of garlic that I harvested. 

Of the 13 heads of garlic only 3-4 have a single clove the rest have multiple cloves around 6-10 per head.  Some of these heads actually are the same size as the garlic that I grew from cloves!

The polish white still needs to be harvested but while I was digging up the others I noticed that the polish white is just sending up scapes now.  I took the few scapes that had formed and will give it another week to die off a little more.  They are going to be pretty green but I guess we will see what they are like.   Eat the small ones and save a few of the big ones for replanting at thanksgiving.  Those are the scapes in the picture below.

The peppers have done very well this year and below are a picture of the Hungarian banana peppers.  They are smaller than the ones I have been getting at the market but we are also a couple hours farther north than the ones I have been getting.

Apple Jelly and Potatoes

I’ve been interested in making some crab apple jelly and this week I finally managed to try it out.  It turned out to be just apple jelly because the crab apples along the road aren’t ready yet.  I used 3 different kinds of apples all that I picked along the road where I live.  They were a mixture of ripe and semi ripe apples in order to provide the necessary pectin content.  I was worried it wouldn’t turn out and just end up being this apple syrup, but it was successful.   Because it worked out, yesterday I picked some more apples and today I have been making more.   I will put up a post solely dedicated to jelly later.

Also today I harvested the first potatoes I planted in the spring.  I there were two hills of banana fingerling, two hills of Macintosh black and one hill of blue Russian.  The banana fingerling were larger than I expected and more prolific.  I was surprised but they did out produce the black mac’s. They did however grow very close to the surface and a number of them had green tips. 

 The Macintosh black were all of a decent size and number.   A few had some scab on them but overall not too bad.  The blue Russian were very successful, there was a good mix of large and small potatoes.  There was actually more potatoes from that one hill than, both hills of the black combined.  As well they also had less scab than the blacks.  

These are the russian blues

I also took a picture of the tomato fruit.

Feels Like Fall

I know it’s not fall yet, but this last week it sure has felt like it.  Nothing has changed in the garden too much, I am still picking cheery tomatoes every few days and there are lots of beans that need to be picked as well.  The same goes for the zucchini and cucumbers; they have hit their second wind and still producing well.  The plants are dying off a bit but I expect them to last a couple more weeks and then they are being pulled out anyways.  This past week a few red peppers have been picked and a number of them are starting to turn from yellow to orange to red. 

The root vegetables have been doing well, the carrots at the bottom are being picked regularly although some of them have been eaten by small little worms.  I think its carrot fly but at least they only infected some and not all.  I hope they have not gotten into the parsnips but I will have to wait and see.

 The potatoes at both my place and the field have done very well; the ones at the field due to the clay soil are all a nice mini size.  The ones at my place are starting to break through the soil in places and the plants are starting to die off.  The potatoes in the bottom garden did get hit pretty hard my potatoes bugs but by the time they showed up the plants had already flowered and had midsized formed tubers so I didn’t bother to powder them or anything.  I will be looking to harvest some of the potatoes on a regular basis for the next month for eating and then the remainder in mid-October when the plants die down.

The leeks look good and im just trying to think of what I can use them in.  The kale and bok choy that were planted a few weeks ago are looking ok.  They do have some bug damage but nothing too major. 

The garlic that is still in the garden is coming out of the ground this weekend.  About ¾ of the plants have at least 1 dead leaf and while they are all still very green I don’t want to leave them in the ground any longer especially since I want to replant them in October. 

The cover crop experiment has been a success!  The buckwheat is around a foot high and starting to flower.  I might give it another week and cut it down before it all goes to seed.  I am debating on planting some more in the top bed where the peas were.  That area is also getting more soil and a dressing of manure so I am not sure if it will even be worth planting any.