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Name: Mary The dry side of Oregon Be yourself, you can be no one else
Yesterday we bought a load of compost. I got about half of it distributed in windrows where the rows will be for garlic. Last night it rained so what is left in the truck will be wet and heavier.
Name: Mary The dry side of Oregon Be yourself, you can be no one else
Everything needs to be canned at once! First it was pears, then tomatoes, plums, and now grapes. Frost got the garden about a week ago so I am doing clean up. I've made pear butter, a prune spread, dried a lot of plums and have made lots of juice. Canned 7 quarts and 4 pints of tomatoes and still have some ripening in boxes. Ron rototilled the side where the garlic will go, mixing 2 pickup loads of compost into the rows. Yesterday I pulled out the last of the tomato plants and am concentrating on removing all of the weeds with seedheads from the north side of the garden before we rototill there. The cornstalks will be shredded and go underground. Beets and onions are still in the ground where they will keep better until I can do something with them. This coming week we will start planting garlic. I might have to try to buy back some of what I sold if the buyer hasn't already resold it because I might be short of seed stock. I need to break up the bulbs and count the cloves.
Name: Mary The dry side of Oregon Be yourself, you can be no one else
Rick broke up the garlic bulbs, I weighed and counted, did some simple math and decided 1,888 is enough! I have 6.5# of Persian Star which is about 403 cloves, 6.75# (about 337 cloves) of Chinese Pink, and 14# or 1148 cloves of Turkish Giant. Allowing for some the gophers will eat, I should have around 1,800 to harvest. I haven't decided what to do with about 10# of elephant garlic. A restaurant that has roasted elephant garlic on their appetizer menu hasn't responded to my offer to sell them some locally grown. I could just plant my broken up seed stock and hope. Nothing lost, nothing gained. Just corrected my math, it adds up to 1,888 cloves. UGH! Am I crazy or what?
Still canning. Maybe another dozen or so quarts to go, and then I will just have to stop.
Name: Mary The dry side of Oregon Be yourself, you can be no one else
One of our granddaughters and her husband helped me plant all of the garlic. We did it all on Friday! I had thought it would take us two days. It's all mulched with a nice layer of straw, and watered down to settle the straw into a nice blanket to keep the wind from blowing it away. Kristy and I moved the pile of bagged leaves I had brought home last fall. The bags had sun rotted so we rolled them onto a tarp and pulled or carried it down to the garden where we dumped them out and scattered them around. Our son Ron shredded the corn stalks, then got the rototiller going and tilled all of it into the soil. I still need to cover the old raspberry area with plastic for the winter, dig the grass and weeds from the new rhubarb planting sites and cover that with plastic to try to kill weeds. I need more compost for that area but will need to get it in the spring.
The nice looking elephant garlic was sold to the co-op along with small bulbs of the regular garlic. Nothing is left now to sell. The unsalable elephant garlic (about 10#) was planted. A few cloves were saved out for cooking.
Name: Mary The dry side of Oregon Be yourself, you can be no one else
I bought a pound each of two new garlic varieties. Today I planted them, covered the row with straw mulch, then watered. The new ones are Inchelium Red, 77 cloves, and Purple Glazer with 90. I put them in the corn patch just in case they carry a virus.
