Garlic scapes

On Sunday we harvested many of our scapes. These are the shoots that the plants send up that contain the seed pods. They would flower just like a chive, but you prefer to not deplete the power of the bulb with reproducing ... so cut them off. And eat them. We use them just as we would chives. In salads, potatos, stirfries ... anywhere is fair game.





Growing around 150 head of garlic produces a lot of scapes. Hopefully around 150. Definitely more than you can eat in salads. So we make pesto with it. Which as far as I'm concerned is better than basil pesto. That's about 50 or so scapes I think. We cut them when they are just starting to fully curl around.





Chop them up. Half way up your processor with scapes, oil to almost cover that, I thinner layer of pine nuts, and p. regiano to taste.








Eat pasta until you burst, freeze the rest.

revised farm plan

Quite different from our original plan:

veggies in container

I attended a workshop on vegetables in container and brought some plants directly from the grower: two tomato plants, bean, basils, egg plant and marigold (to repel insects). We are not really into the container approach but we decided to do it as an experiment.

She recommended putting the tomato (called lollipop, transluscent yellow cherry type), bean (ice wax) and basil together. I put the egg plant (fairy tale) in a separate pot and the other tomato plant (red striped roman) in the ground (thanks goodness we still have a little bit of space left).

The weather has been cold consistently. Mark built a shelter for the sweet basils over the weekend. However, it is just too cold for them. Today, it is 8C.

garlics

I've noticed that some garlic scapes are shooting out from the smaller garlic cloves that we planted. I forgot the name of this particular variety but I was told by the grower (where we bought the bulbs from) that this garlic variety will mature two weeks earlier than the other varieties. The size of this kind is smaller (see the shorter plants on the left hand size of the garlic patch) but the flavour is pungent.

Today's temperature is 11C.

pole beans etc

We decided to grow some pole beans this year. The seeds were started indoor and we planted 3 seedlings outside over the weekend.

Though many seeds have sprouted, the growth rate is very slow and some of the plants were severely attacked by some mysterious insects. The pic shows the damage of the bok choy seedlings. It seems that only radishes, onions and peas aren't affected by the bugs. We brought fish fertilizer and sprinkle it all over our seedlings to see if it makes an improvement.

The salad mix that we planted on the new planter is ready for harvesting. Lovely!