Barnyard Peppers

After picking a bunch of peppers from my garden last week I decided I better check out the barnyard garden and am really glad I did.  I ended up taking just under a half bushel.  A number of those were green peppers; now that I have some that are finally ripe I might as well have a good variety to eat.

I also picked a couple more baskets from home of ripe peppers across all varieties.

 

The Peppers Continue

Picked some more peppers today this time I'm guessing around 9 liters were picked.  It was a blend of every variety with the exception of the golden Cal wonder, they still aren’t yellow yet.  I did get a king of the north that was ripe though.  Based on the amount that I have picked so far I would say half of everything that will be taken out of there has been picked.

 

Garlic Cleaning

This morning I spent about 3 hours cleaning all of my garlic up to bag and label it.  Now I did do this while watching War Horse so that may have contributed to it taking so long.  For each of the varieties I cut all of the bulbs off of the stalks using garden pruners (scissors aren’t strong enough for hardneck garlic, they will work but so much easier with a pruner) and then cut the roots off with scissors.  At the same time I also rubbed off the outer layer off of the bulb so that they were nice and clean.  I then spread out each variety on a cardboard flat so that I could see them all and pick the ones I wanted to save for planting in the fall.  It was also so that I could see the size difference between those that I left scapes on and those that had the scapes cut off.

This is a picture of the Music that I grew in the garden.  The bulbs on the left had scapes left on them and produced bulbils, the ones on the right had the scapes removed.

The size difference really isn’t that different going through all of the varieties I grew.  I still had some large bulbs but didn’t have any that were exceptionally large.  So I would say by leaving the scape you are eliminating the possibility of getting the largest possible bulb. But any that had the scape left on were right around average with those that had the scape removed.

I weighed each variety to see what the yield was, it is as follows:

Music – 3lb 8oz

Music from Field – 2lb 8oz

Red Russian –2lb

Northern Quebec –2lb 11oz

Georgian Fire –2lb 14oz

McEwen’s Red – don't remember

Polish White – 2lb

Brown Saxon – 2lb 4oz

I didn’t record the number of heads of each that I picked, but if I was to look back to the tags I wrote out I would be able to figure it out.  There were about 25 bulbs per variety with the music and polish white having double that.

Overall I was very happy with my garlic harvest and am planning a significant increase in production next year.

 

Tidy Up

Went out and picked a bunch more peppers approximately 6lts of a couple different varieties.  They were mostly jimmy Nardello and chocolate.  There are tons of them still on the plants that I am just waiting to ripen up.

I also stopped on the way home to clean up the barnyard plot.  I have definitely been neglecting it and it was in need of a good weeding.  Thankfully there are a couple of plots that look much worse than mine, so I haven’t felt too bad.

Stratford Garlic Festival

Last year in the fall when I was looking for some new garlic varieties I found out about the Stratford garlic festival.  I had already bought some varieties from Ego’s and didn’t want to go and possibly get more until I had grown some and decided if I liked it as a crop or not.

 

Well after this year’s successful garlic crop and the fact that I have discovered that I love growing it, I decided that a trip to the Stratford garlic festival was necessary even though it’s like a 2.5 hour drive.  I went down after hockey and the weather was exactly what they called for.  It poured rain the whole way down and then once I was there it started to clear up.  There was a 10 minutes period where I temporarily left the festival to sit in the car because of the rain.

I tried a number of different samples of garlic, garlic products, jams and even some honey.  The lack of actually lunch food kind of surprised me but there were a few places. I ended up bringing home some honey, and a lavender ginger jam.

Now for the most important part the garlic!  The first thing I did when I got there was a walk around to see who had what various kinds of garlic.  While I did check out the prices, any garlic that I was going to be able to purchase there would be much cheaper than something I would have to order from BC, not to mention I could hand pick exactly what I want and it should already be adjusted to our climate.

For purchases from August’s Harvest I bought German Red (Rocambole).  For selection they grow about 7 varieties in large quantities and the varieties they grow are all larger varieties.  The bulbs I purchased were large and price was $9/lb. 

At Hampstead Garlic I bought 4 different varieties. Red grain (purple stripe), Red Rezan (glazed), Brown Tempest (marbled) and Purple Glazer (glazed). They were all nice looking bulbs and he had about 25 different kinds available.  I paid $8/lb which was about the average to lower end at the festival.

The last place I bought garlic from was Golden Acres Farm.  I saved them for last because they had by far the largest selection there.  They grow over 127 different kinds and had 41 at the festival.  Now their garlic is all certified organic and was selling at $14/lb.  It was there that I bought 10 different kinds of garlic.  I bought Marbled Purple Stripes: Red Russian,Irkutsk,Gaia's Joy and Siberian; Rocambole's: Carpathian, Killarney Red and Pitarelli; Purple Stripes: Chesnok Red and Persian Star; as well as a Porcelain: Georgian Crystal.

 

I thought it was a good festival and am very pleased with everything I was able to get.  I ended up spending $75 just on garlic for next year’s crop but will be able to replant cloves year after year so was ok with the cost.  I am also going to have to change up the garden plans a little for next year.

Pea Clean Up

The peas are officially done and all of the vines have been pulled.  Tons of pods were picked off to save seeds and I'm going to go through them later to pick out the ones I want to keep and the ones I don’t.  The pea netting was going to be removed completely but the morning glory is still growing and I would really like to see it flower before I pull it down.  So what I did was move the netting as high as I could without effecting the plants so I could access the ground easily.

I used the ridging hoe to break it all up and then planted buckwheat and a few peas as a cover crop until I'm ready to plant the garlic in a couple months.

Saving Peas

On the way home from work today I stopped at the barnyard garden to pick a few peppers and get my share of potatoes.  Overall we only ended up getting slightly more potatoes than we planted due to the summer drought we experienced.  The way I look at it is its better than nothing.  And the peppers I picked looked great, including a couple really tiny purple ones.

After I got home I hit the garden again to continue my harvest.  I picked a bunch of peppers again, a basket of chocolate peppers and basket of jimmy’s as well as a mixed 4lt basket of tomatoes.

These are Jimmy Nardello's

Sweet Hungarian Banana

Alma Paprika

Sweet Chocolate

This is a Golden Calwonder before it has ripened

Purple Beauty

 

I finally managed to get the time to tear out all of the pea plants.  They all came out pretty easily but I'm going to need to leave the trellises in for a little longer so that I don’t kill off the flowers.  The netting is going to be raised off of the ground, to allow me to dig it up and plant buckwheat.  After ripping out all of the plants I shelled all of the peas that have been drying inside.  I ended up with around a 500ml jar full of dried peas.

These were all of the tomatoes I picked. The polish linguisa after trying it is extremely meaty and a great paste tomato.

Black Prince

Kansas Depression

Polish Linguisa

Black Cherry

 

Isis Cherry