farm

I have unveiled the fabric over the garlics a couple weeks ago...and today, I just remember that we'll have to be more diligent in posting updates of our "farm". So here we go.

Garlic planting

After several years of growing garlic on our small garden, the disease has finally caught up on them. The farmers are right, that you can't keep using the same plot for garlic growing. Though we did switch the garlic patch from front to back for a year, I returned to the same plot the next year, and that's apparently not enough for the patch to recover.

This summer, I went to the Limbert garlic festival in Chilliwack to buy a whole bunch of garlic to use as seed. There were three different garlic farm stands, and I bought some from each of them:
- one sells Italian
- one sells Yugoslavian
- one sells a varieties of garlic. I bought music, porcelain, georgian and red Russian.

When I split up the garlic bulbs today, some of the georgian and red russian bulbs have already turned mouldy and can't be used. Too bad.

Each year we use our own homegrown garlic as seed. This year, every glove is from someone else. I don't really feel good about it. Well, let's hope for the best next year.

Dinner

We've been eating out of our garden very regularly since last summer. We had so many leeks we didn't manage to eat them all over the winter.

Here is dinner tonight. Some snow peas steamed in a reduced stock, fresh garlic, basil, and chives. They were delicious.

The strawberries are coming thick and fast and are ending up in our salads. The greens for salad were in the fridge when the picture was taken. They were varied from endive to wild arugula, beet leaves and young red romaine.

Sprouting garlic

Last week Michelle removed the fabric on our garlic. It's already up around 6 inches. This is fully one month ahead of last year. But, last year we had two feet of snow, and this year, since we have the Olympics, we have no snow (none on the ski hills either).

Canada Day

It is a sunny but cool day. Compared to the cold and wet spring/summer of 2008, so far we have been having an excellent year. The garlics, which we usually harvest them around mid-July, seem to be ready. I pulled out five garlics just to have a look and they look great, except that the skin is a bit wet, so I turned the sprinkler of that section off. We may plan to pull them all out this weekend.

pea and leek: new method

As a new veggie grower, we learn something new every year and we always try to do things a bit different the next year hoping to see some improvements. So this year, we've tried a new pea trellis. I brought a net from the nursery and mounted it on the wooden frame. It looks pretty good, though I believe that the trellis is not tall enough for the pea to climb. Oh well, next year project...

For the leeks, I've tried the trench method. It is a method that I learned while looking for information about vegetable farming on the Internet. Over the course of the growing season, the trench is gradually filled in with soil. The goal is to encourage the grow of the white part of the leek. (the tall green plants are garlics)

Last year garlic

I can't remember what happened to the garlic during our first year of growing, however, I do remember the second year. We had a bountiful harvest. After giving some away, there were still plenty left and we weren't able to finish them before they turned bad. So around spring time I guess, quite a number of garlic bulbs had turned into dark brown colour. For some reasons, they didn't sprout, but the clove had become so hard and dry that it was quite impossible to cut. They ended up in the compost. ;(

Last year was our third year of garlic growing. As of now, they are still in good shape. The picture shows the remaining garlic that we harvested last year. Aren't they still pretty looking? And tasty also. So what had we done differently last year? Well, I guess we cured them in the open air under the patio longer than last year. That's it! We'll do it again this year!

Snow in March

As I look outside, I see snow covers everywhere and everything. It is still snowing.

We had a warm and sunny morning yesterday. However, the temperature started to drop in the afternoon. My neighbour said it felt like it is going to snow. He was right. It started at about 5.40pm and we were getting big snow flakes of about 3-5cm. After about half an hour, the snow stopped and the sun came out.

When we woke up this morning, it was snowing.

How will it affect the garlic? We'll see.

Sunny days

It is such a treat to have sunny weather for more than a week now. There is not much going on in our backyard farm except the cleanup.

Three of the pole bean plants have been pulled down last week. One is still standing. Guess it'd better to leave it in the ground than having the beans sitting in the fridge. The cucumber plant is also down.

I also cleaned up all the garlics that were hanging under the patio (cut off the root and the stalk and brought the bulbs into the house). Meanwhile, since the weather is nice, I stuck 10 cloves somewhere in the front just for fun.

Today, Mark sowed some arugula seeds in the back and covered them in the coldframe.

The swiss chard is still growing strong and big since the summer. However, we haven't been eating them at all (besides the baby one that we use in salad). Is there a great recipe to cook swiss chard? I did some searches on the Internet but none of the recipes appeal to me. They look great in the ground, so maybe just let them be the decorative edible plant.

Planting garlic

This is the weekend after Thanksgiving, and the weather is very co-operative (max 10C, sunny), a perfect day to plant garlics.

This year, we decided to plant the garlic in the backyard. The area in which we plan to grow garlic still have some carrots in the ground, so we pull them out to clear the way. (yes, I have been making carrot cakes and having carrots in salad) Mark is responsible for laying the foundation! First is to dig deep into the soil to pull out as many morning glory roots as we can (we did it in the spring before planting but as we all know, you can't really get rid of them). Then we add our compost into the soil, and mix the soil with peat moss and blood meal.

Meanwhile, I select the big cloves from our garlic (I guess I've opened up dozens of garlic heads) and use them as seedlings. I guess I've planted about 150 cloves. Yes, that's A LOT of garlic. Do we need that many? No. But the process of growing is so enjoyable! And no store brought garlic can beat the flavor and quality of homegrown garlic.

Tonight dinner from the garden: salad with green (the fall sown arugula is coming out, plus baby swiss chard and lettuce from this summer), cucumber, sungold and red onion, pureed parship, stir fry carrots and corn (this is the only item from the farmer's market)

Oh, we also sowed a few bush bean seeds. Don't know what the name is...the seeds are from my in-law.

This is going to be our garlic patch. Carrots are all over the place.

These are the carrots that we pulled from the soon-to-be garlic patch. I've sown carrot seeds around the roma plants (carrots and tomatoes are good companion plants). These carrots are shaded by the tomato plants, so their size is very small)

Compost from our handsome homemade spinning compost bin

Opening up a garlic bulb to get big clove for planting

Planting in process

Get ready for the rain

The weather has been mild and sunny these few days. However, I heard on the radio on my way home that rain will arrive starting tomorrow. So after I got home, I grabbed a few containers and started picking the sungold: ripe or half ripe. The sungold tends to split quickly in rainy condition. I think I've picked about 6 pints (not shown in pic). As for the roma...well, I've picked about 10, and two of the red stripped roman. The rest are definitely started to change...at least they are a bit yellowish.

After picking the tomatoes, I moved onto the raspberries. The raspberries which grows in the fall are much bigger and sweeter than the summer version. I can't remember when and how did we end up having two varieties of the raspberry plants.

I was out of town last week and I can't believe that the pole beans are in such an abundance. We have been eating a couple pounds of pole beans each days: stir frying them in home-grown onion and Thai bird chili (yes, most of them have turned red). The pole beans are picked right before the dinne. Not only they taste fantastic, they provide a sensational month feel that is absolutely missing from the store bought beans. It is a lot of fun to pick them also (treasure hunting)!









The garlic have been curing under the patio and they seem to do fine. However, I notice that mould is growing on the two bundles that were hanged closer to the wall. I have no idea why these garlics got the mould but not the others. I was really disappointed as I remember that these are the two bundles that showed the most white-ish outer skin. Fortunately, the mould doesn't affect the interior yet, so I cleaned them up right away and took them into the kitchen. And yes, I use them in our stir fry pole beans :)

Harvesting garlics

This is our second year growing garlic. Last year, we harvested the goodies on July 15. This year, it was on July 20. Gardening advice says that garlics are ready to be harvested when half of the green have turned yellow (ratio varies depending on who gives the advice). Thus I have a hard time deciding when is the time to pull them out.

The weather has been dry and hot for weeks now. We decided to pull the garlics out today. The variety with the smaller bulbs were pulled two weeks ago. They have red outer skin. Today, we pulled those bulbs grown from the garlics we grew from last year. They are hard neck with white skin (note to myself: remember to write down the name of the variety).

There are a total of about 100 heads, including a dozen that we planted in between the flower bed...40 bulbs short from last year. (I planted really close to one another last year though)

We tied up 10 bulbs as a bundle and hang them under the patio deck for curing.

It took quite a while to remove the outer layer and clean up the dirt. But the process was very satisfying.

Brown spots were found on some of the garlics last year. They were found on many of the garlics this year. However, none were found from the garlics that were grown in the flower bed. Oh, just one more pic...a cute twin garlic.

veggies are ready!

I went out of town for about 10 days and I can't believe how much our urban farm has transformed during this period. The weather has been great, and plants are growing fast. We have the same dinner almost everyday: snow pea and green salad with radishes and herbs. Nothing taste better than veggies straight from the backyard. When the tomato and carrot are ready, we'll mix them into the salad as well.



The beet seeds that we had in the previous year yielded pretty big bulbs.
However, we have a different variety this year and the bulbs are small. Oh well...

Also, the garlics seem to be ready to be picked. Since it is still early July, we'll wait for maybe a couple more weeks.

Exposing our garlic

Today we took the fabric mulch off the garlic patch. The tallest of the sprouts are about 3 inches. Parts of the patch show no sign of life, but the alfalfa mulch is thicker in those places. Nothing more to say ... here's the picture.