Garden Mid Summer

Our garden is in full swing and I am in that blissed out state that my fellow garden junkies understand completely. Here are some updates on what is happening. Click on a picture to enlarge it.

Above is a shot from the back porch taken June 30.

An early butternut squash, about 4 inches. We have about 12 plants this year. They are spreading out all over the garden. In a few weeks, we will be stepping over them. These are wonderful squash- Waltham Butternut. They store all winter. We finished our crop from last year in March.

A patch of Bright Lights Swiss chard. We always plant this variety and harvest it from about May to November. We use it like spinach, and freeze a bunch. It handles the weather extremes well. If I can get my cold frame built in time, I will try growing some this winter.

After the spinach was harvested, we planted buckwheat for a cover crop. A cover crop is grown not for harvest, but to enrich the soil. They are also great for preventing soil erosion. The idea is to grow a cover crop when a bed is empty and chop it down before it sets seed. It will decompose into the soil. Buckwheat grows very fast and within a month is beautiful. When it flowered, we cut it off at the base and let it stay in the bed like straw. It is now being covered by the butternut squash planted at each end of the bed. After the squash is harvested in the fall, we will plant a new bed of strawberries in that bed from the daughter plants grown this summer.

The herb garden in early June, edged with yellow alpine strawberries.

Nearly every day, I get a bowl of berries from our garden! Above are the last of the blueberries and the first of the raspberries. Blackberries are next.

Our thornless blackberries (Triple Crown) are about to explode. We have a patch about 15 feet long and 8 feet tall covering the south side of our garage.

Our side garden with blackberries (along wall), sweet potatoes (center), bush beans (left), and blueberries (right). The bush beans followed a spring broccoli crop. The blueberries are wrapped in nylon mesh to keep the birds from eating every last one. It worked and we had a great harvest this year.

Our row of 9 tomato plants edged with basil. We planted 10 more tomato plants in other locations- wherever we could squeeze them in. It's hard to have too many tomatoes. We freeze and share them.

Yellow and red onions are about ready to harvest. The yellow variety are mostly Stuttgarter. The red are Red Bull variety.

Ichiban eggplant and bush zucchini grow in pots on our porch. This means more watering, but it's such a joy to have them right outside the kitchen door.

Volunteer sunflowers-we had dozens- keep the bees happy. They also attract yellow finches and give a little shade from the hot afternoon sun. They grow with no effort on my part. What could be better?

Back Yard Garlic

Garlic is among the easiest things to grow, and your own garlic will be so fresh and juicy compared to what you get at the supermarket. In our zone 6b garden, South Central Pennsylvania, we plant garlic in October and harvest it in early July. We have been planting a hardneck variety called German White. For this year, we added a few Siberian Red plants to compare the two.

2012 Garlic, late May

Clove from last year's crop

Last fall, we had enough garlic left from the summer harvest to plant for the following year. I saved the largest cloves for seed garlic. This year, we planted about 200 cloves. Each clove is planted about an inch deep. Space them about 6-8 inches and cover with a heavy layer of straw, about 6 inches. Then forget about them until spring. They will be one of the first plants to come up. In fact, ours sent up shoots in the late fall and many of them never really died back!

Garlic in May 2013, far left and far right beds

I leave the mulch on the plants until mid May, then remove it and add some compost. By about Memorial Day, the garlic are producing long scapes which contain a flower bud at each end. We follow conventional advice, which is to remove the scapes to allow the plant to put more energy into the bulbs. We use the scapes like green beans, put them in stir fries, and make pesto from them. There are lots of great recipes out there for fresh garlic scapes. 

In about another month, the garlic leaves will be getting pretty brown. We harvested June 30 here this year. Using Ed Smith's guidelines (The Vegetable Gardener's Bible), we look for the bottom few leaves to start turning yellow. I always pull a few test plants as well to be sure the bulbs are well formed and not starting to separate. You can eat them anytime. Ours were a little early this year. It's been very warm. Our soil is loose enough that we could simply pull the bulbs gently from the bed. I brush them off with my hand and pile them up.

Garlic, harvest day

The Siberian Red bulbs are smaller, but look great. We will do a taste test of our two varieties once they are cured.

To prepare them for long-term storage, I hang them in bunches of 6 or 7 in the garage. The greens and roots should be left on until they are dried. This year, I ran out of space so made a drying rack out of a trellis. They dry for 2 or 3 weeks, or until the skins are paper-like. Then, I cut the tops off and store them in our basement in baskets. Last year, they lasted until we ate them all, about January.