Summer harvest

What do you have to harvest? I love gathering salad from the garden, pulling up the last of my garlic, munching on blueberries and raspberries...

You harvest the garlic this early? Somewhere I'd heard to wait till the bottom 3 leaves had browned.

Beautiful garlic, Mauryhill. Great big heads and thats what I love.

Thanks beebonnet. That particular variety is really huge, and is also very flavorful. It was originally given to me by a friend, about 10 years ago.

Summer, it doesn't look like it in the photo, but the bottom 3 leaves had dried down. I pulled them off when cleaning up the garlic before taking it in the house. The main thing is to harvest when the bulbs are mature, which of course is hard to tell when they are underground, so people often go by the leaves. I've heard to wait until there are only 6 green leaves left on the top, but sometimes that doesn't happen even when the bulbs are ready because of an exceedingly wet spring. If I wait too long, the bulbs break apart and don't store well. What I usually do is pull up a test garlic to see if it is time to harvest yet. Most kinds of garlic I have grown matures sometime in the first 2 weeks of July.

The picture below is of my Armenian garlic, which I harvested earlier.

This message was edited Jul 17, 2013 5:23 PM

Ah, I see. Well, I went & pulled up mine anyway. It was a mess of a little patch, either from sprouted store-bought bulbz or maybe left over from pulling up last year's. So it looks nothing like yours but ... it's garlic & it's mine.

So far I'm just getting herbs but the peppers, both sweet & hot, are only days away. And the daylilies are contributing greatly to my salads.

Well, see, everybody has their strength, and the things that do well for them. It doesn't matter for flavor how big your garlic is. It still tastes great! I have never been able to grow decent peppers no matter how hard I try. Pictures? I could enjoy peppers vicariously through pictures of yours. :-) I do have a few herbs too....some parsley, thyme, and lots and lots of oregano. The oregano went wild and took over several flower beds while I was in graduate school the last 2 years.

Maybe we can trade. I yanked up my variegated oregano to put somewhere else & kind of forgot that last part so it crisped in the sun. (I DO THIS ALL THE TIME, DANGIT).

We are having a monthlong heat spell so that is helpful with the pepperz & tomatoes. They are going gangbusterz. Will take pix in the morning.

I have been working so hard in the garden & had cheap, drunken helperz here all week & the whole property is still out of control. Am a bit frustrated. So thanks, Maury, for helping us focus on the pozitive!

Beautiful! And the garlic ain't so bad either! :-)

LOL, lynnala! Wild gardening hair, dirty knees and all! I run a summer tutoring program in the afternoon twice a week at the elementary over the summer and have to do a quick change from gardening duds into clean and neat "teacher clothes" brushing dirt and burrs out of my hair as I go.

Summer, where on earth did you get drunken helpers? I can certainly relate to an out-of-control property. Mine was almost entirely neglected while I was in school (online, but still time consuming) and working full time. I am slowly reclaiming from the mile high nettles, nasty thistles, and invasive grass, buttercup, etc. I yanked out a lot of the oregano, but there is still plenty left. I can set some out to dry for you and send it in the mail if you give me your address. No need to mail me back fresh peppers, as I think that would be too expensive.

My DH planted a bed of cabbages to make sauerkraut, then volunteer cabbages sprung up in other places (also volunteer kale), so needless to say, we have an abundance of cabbage.

I did only a small amount of veggie gardening this year - mostly in containers on my back deck. Getting some zucchini large enough to eat this weekend, lots of green tomatoes, harvesting some spuds and lettuce.

Not sure what happened to the formatting, things are kind of squishy for me today, but I assume the tech folk continue with their tweaking.

...meanwhile we are still battling the 15 years of blackberry growth that came with our place. My husband has turned into Conan the Blackberry Slayer, it's amazing! He comes in holding gigantic blackberry roots like they are the heads of his vanquished enemy. Can't wait to be able to start gardening. Your pics are so inspiring!

I worked on mine yesterday. Still bleeding from all limbz, I kid you not.

I am ignoring the blackberry patch while I focus on the nettles and thistles...gotta start somewhere. I would love to have a local blackberry slayer. My DH can no longer do that level of physical labor, although he has done plenty of his share of it in younger years.
Bonehead, containers are sometimes the best way to go, keeps things manageable and right by the kitchen where they are needed and used. The only way I managed to have vegetable beds to plant this year was to clear them out a year ago and put down weed block cloth over the winter. I actually hate using that stuff, but it was an act of desperation to keep the weeds down until I could plant something. I still have one bed covered, and 3 other beds that are still in massive weeds.

Back in Illinois I would use 40-50 straw bales in a year, partly for the same purpose & partly as wallz for my compost piles.

Maybe that is what I need to do...order a truckload of straw bales. It would be better for the soil. Unfortunately, I live on an island, and it is hard to get things like that without paying an arm and a leg. Maybe not that much more than the rolls of landscape cloth, when you think about it, though. It is worth looking into.

mauryhillfarm, I've been away on a trip and just saw this thread. Wow, you don't grow garlic...you grow MONSTER GARLIC! It's beautiful.

Thanks momlady. That's at least one thing I can do with decent results. My ornamental gardening attempts are somewhat dismal and I'm starting over in a couple of beds. This involves lots of weeding and digging, while I ponder how I managed to plant things too close together even while using a measuring tape to take into account the supposed mature size of a shrub.

Hee hee! It's because you haven't taken into account the PNWF...
The PNWF, also known as the Pacific Northwest Factor, is 1.25: Take the standard height or width range of your plant, say an expected height of 3-4 feet. Use the maximum value, in this example this would be 4 feet high. Multiply the larger value by 1.25, (4 times 1.25) and get 5. This means your PNW expected height is 5 feet.
P.S. I just made the PNWF up, however, I do use this calculation because it seems that out here everything goes about 25% larger than the maximum value given in its description.
I guess it's a good problem for us to have, but it's hard to remember that when you are digging out the tall plant in front of the short plant and the tall plant wasn't supposed to get THAT TALL!

I do not have momlady's math skillz. So here is MY formula: Assume that it will get the size of the nearest blackberry thicket.

Ha ha, Momlady -- that is so true. My sister lives on the east side of the slope and I'm over here on the coast - we chuckle over height estimates. I always go WAY over and she usually goes WAY under -- as we exchange plants routinely. Often even the color is different from the west to the east side. Go figure. But all fun.

We've been eating lots of cucumber salads, beets, potatoes, raspberries, and some early tomatoes. Yum! No garlic this year - I always forget to plant it in the fall.

Broccoli, cauliflower, zukes! And, I have two set of neighbors who love zucchini AND one who's chickens love (ahem) large zucchini. This is good because I am getting several zukes each day, plus the random harvest of a big 'un that was hiding under a huge leaf.

It all sounds delicious. Do you have pictures of your vegetable gardens? I would love to see other people's set-ups.

I'll definitely have to consider the PNWF while planting (I believe in it even if if you say you made it up, momlady). I suppose the plant labels are really fairly generic, even though I buy most of my plants at local nurseries.

I sure am enjoying reading this thread that I answered on the 17th and forgot to check back. I totally agree about things getting way too big. I have a green tea bush that has decided to block my view from the kitchen window, which is high. I want my DH to take his power saw to it. He has been so busy with hay season that he ignores my pleas. Mauryhill, your cabbages are gorgeous. Mine are kind of pitiful but they will be tasty. I will have to buy cabbage for my sauerkraut, I think. We were so busy making a deer fence this year that we didn't get some things in when we should have. I will have no beets this year. Cabbages will be small. But, think I will have really great Brussels Sprouts. I have canned 6 pts. of beans, more later. I will have tons of dried beans from the poles. Hope so, anyway.
momlady...do you ever make zucchini relish? I like it even better than cucumber relish. Its very easy and is delicious on sandwiches. Also uses your zucs up. LOL
I'm going out to take some pics of my garden to post. I love looking at other peoples gardens, especially here in the glorious PNW.

I never really did get a veggie garden in so .... happy to get a radish or two right now!

I plant year round though, so looking forward to this fall's cropz.

Went out today and snapped some pics of my garden. It definitely has that late summer look now. Even though it is small by some standards, it really produces lots of food. Certainly enough for the two of us. Enough to preserve, give away and feed the chickens, too. I am now starting to grow my peppers in pots which live in the small GH until late July when I move them outside. Last year I grew them in the garden beds and got so few that it wasn't worth taking up the space. This way, I can move them back when the weather gets cool and I think they will keep on producing until very late autumn. In a mild winter they may even make it through and produce very early. I have already had several long eggplant fruits and the poor thing looks tired now. We just don't have the warm weather needed for peppers and/or eggplants, so I guess you have to baby them to fool Mother Nature.

Okay, now for some more. I am having trouble figuring out how this works.
New deer fence, corn, brussels and broc, pole beans, cucumber

Here are a few more shots
Closely planted full garden of just stuff
Flowers which i just can't resist
Pathetic cabbage which i think will be tasty anyway

Beebonnet, that looks glorious!!! The deer fencing really is necessary if you want to plant food for your family rather than most of it going to the wildlife.

Beebonnet, totally stunning.

I plant all my tomatoes in 5-gallon terracotta potz, and the peppers in slightly smaller ones. It's the only way to get a crop up by me. I think they get more heat & water that way.

Fabulous garden. It's growing and producing like crazy. Yum!
I had to put up a deer fence this year for the first time. I think the hunters in our neck of the woods are getting older and not going out hunting as much, because I have seen deer in the yard for the first time in our 12 years here.
Pots for peppers - that's a good idea, you two. The ones in my garden are doing nothing and are taking up a lot of real estate.

This message was edited Jul 29, 2013 5:20 PM

Thanks, ladies. DG's picture loading system has changed a bit since I last tried it. Actually, its great that we can add more than 1 at a time.
I forgot to say that the lettuce in the foreground of the cabbage photo is French Heirloom lettuce, some call it Marvel of 4 seasons, as it does well almost all year round. I save seeds from it every year but found it sold here. (Also, if I get lots, I would be willing to trade for something else.) http://www.westcoastseeds.com/productdetail/vegetable-seeds/Lettuce/Continuity/#sthash.lVpBE7wB.dpbs
Has anyone bought seeds from this company? I haven't, but I am going to check them out. Have a great gardening day.
Sue

The producers.

The soon-to-be producers.

The long shots (melons and sweet potatoes).

An overall shot and OMG! Why did I plant so many squash?

Momlady...Your garden is fantastic! And, big! Everything looks lovely, especially all the basil. I envy the basil and your long shots. We are just too close to the ocean here, I think, and too much wind. I do grow basil in my greenhouse, though. This year I grew Italian Big Leaf. Never again. I love Sweet Basil.
I think this is the year of the squash, for sure. I only planted 4 winter delicatas and one Baby Delica (not sure of this one) and they are going crazy, especially that Baby one that I have never grown before.
Thanks for posting photos of your garden. I really enjoyed them.

Ditto!! Momlady's garden is spectacular! I am really enjoying seeing other people's veggie gardens too.
How I get too much squash is because those seeds just look so tiny, and the package has so many more than I ought to plant in one year. So a package of seeds lasts several years, and by the time it has been hanging around for a while, the seeds are getting old. I don't want to waste them, and plant all the ones I have left.
How we got too many cabbage this year....My DH planted cabbage seed too early and they didn't come up. He was disappointed, and a bit impatient and went out and bought cabbage starts. We planted those (about 8 of them) and then all his seeds proceeded to sprout. As if that weren't enough, 3 more cabbages appeared as volunteers.