To add variety to this week’s CSA shares, I dug up 50 garlic a little ahead of the main harvest in a week or two. It’s looking great. Uncured garlic doesn’t store as well, but how long are you gonna let a single bulb of garlic hang around?! Really, there’s no such thing as too much garlic!
garlic
Wheel turning
Life moves fast through our short growing season. Lushness and abundance peak and fade quickly into decline. The garlic, so green and promising only a few weeks ago, is already dying back, ready for harvest by month’s end. (Here, we’re splurging on a watering by sprinkler; I’m not sure of effectiveness of this exact timing, but a nice soaking round about now should give those garlic bulbs an extra growing boost during their last days.) In front of the garlic, more crops past their prime. The third planting of mesclun (we’re already harvesting the fifth) has started to bolt, ready to be plowed under. And a bed of arugula that, despite row cover, had been invaded by flea beetles, was chopped down and now lies brown and overdue for tilling in. Wheel keeps on turning…! (LATER NOTE: Watering garlic during its last few weeks is not considered a great idea, but in this case, it didn’t hurt.)
New view
Here’s a view of the lower part of the field, from an angle that I don’t check out too often, looking over the garlic, past mesclun, carrots, green onions, beets, to the greenhouse, and you can see the veggie stand—it’s still roofless—tucked away behind. (Normally, only the mesclun would be in this area, with the root crops at the top of the field, but because the new section wasn’t ready in time for putting in fine seed—too much sod to break up—I’ve had to move things around a bit.) And so, it’s nearing the end of another hot and sunshiny day of weeding, seeding, more weeding…and so forth. We started pruning, staking and caging tomatoes, before they got too far carried away—it’s good to be on time!
Set to explode
There are many particularly exciting points during the growing season, and this is one of ’em! We’re on the third plantings for some crops, things are emerging everywhere, and some plantings are just getting ready to put on serious growth towards maturity and harvest. In other words, the field is getting ready to explode with veggies. This happens several times during the year, in different sections, with different plantings and crops, but the first time is right across the field and always a thrill. For me, it still seems like kind of a miracle when all those tiny seeds and plans and energy actually turn into…the new Veggie Garden! Here, green onions (in the faint furrows) and carrots under burlap are recent second plantings (yesterday), and the garlic is starting to shoot up on the way to tasty garlic scapes in June…
Garlic, now!
Garlic is shooting up once again. Although we’re only five days into a nice warm weather stretch, this year’s crop of Music seems to be at almost the same place as last year’s garlic in the all-mild April of 2006. You can see it growing by the day. Elsewhere in the field, things are moving ahead faster and with more on the go than ever before, with Conall (the all-new organic grower) picking up new field skills practically by the hour. Let’s see how things continue to shape up!
Checking on the garlic
Today was the first walk around of the field of the year! The ground is still mostly frozen, but some spots have melted into a thick clayey muck that’ll take a while to dry out. So, you stick to the hard spots. Here, the fall-planted garlic beds are showing up. The row markers are there to prevent tilling accidents. The straw mulch is supposed to protect the cloves from heaving up during any quick freezing and thawing, by evening out the soil temperature (I doubt that would happen in this soil, it’s a just-in-case). The mulch does keep down weeds and hold in moisture during the spring and early summer, which alone is worth it. Garlic will be the first in-field veggie greenery of the season…if all has gone well.
