Addendum to garden progress

As an addendum to the blog post on our garden progress, here's a bit of an update: Mulch!

We had a good solid, steady rain yesterday, so everything got thoroughly watered. Since I couldn't work outdoors during that kind of weather, instead I went into town and purchased some bales of straw. (Not hay; straw. Hay, when used as mulch, can grow unwanted plants in the garden. The only thing straw mulch will grow is the occasional wheat plant.)

I laid down a sheet in the car and crammed in four bales of straw. Despite the protective sheet, they still made a mess. By the time I thought to take a photo, I'd already removed one of the bales (there's a bale in back, behind these two).

I loaded the rest into our Gorilla cart.

I transported one bale of straw at a time into the garden using a hay sled.

It didn't take long to spread straw on each potato bed.

All eight beds, mulched.

I had about two and a quarter bales of straw left for future mulching projects. I loaded the uncut bales onto the hay sled and crammed it under the porch, where the straw will stay dry.

Straw is nice as a mulch because we can use it for several years. I mulched four out of the five beds of garlic I planted last fall with the previous year's mulch. As we ramp up the garden, we'll get whatever additional straw we need to mulch the additional beds, then reuse it until it breaks down enough to just dig in as an addendum to the soil.

Gotta love garlic

If there's one thing I love to grow in the garden each year, it's garlic.

Year after year, this beautiful allium produces a dependable crop of huge cloves.

After harvesting, I work in the shade of the barn where I trim off all the stems. I grow a German porcelain-neck garlic. Rather than those annoying cloves that get smaller and smaller toward the center, this kind of garlic has large (and sometimes huge) cloves around a central stiff (or "porcelain") stem. It's got a nice bite to it, just as garlic should.

A friend wanted to grow some of her own, so I passed on several heads for planting.

After pulling garlic, it needs to dry out for a few days. I laid the garlic out on cardboard on some wire shelves we have in the house.

Over time, I peeled the garlic. It's kind of a laborious task, but for some reason I don't mind it. I do a bit at a time and rather enjoy pulling shining creamy-white garlic cloves from the dirty skins.

I kept back 150 of the largest cloves for planting, and on October 29, I went out to plant them in the garlic boat. Mr. Darcy was a huge help.

So huge, in fact, that I had to put him back in the house until I was finished. There's only so much help I can take, doncha know.

I started by scraping back the pine needle mulch, thinking I could plant half the bed at a time.

But since I like to lay the whole bed out before planting, I ended up removing all the mulch for the moment.

Planting takes no time at all. Shove a trowel into the dirt, angle it out to create a space, drop in the clove (root side down), remove the trowel, and it's on to the next clove.

Then I recovered the bed with pine needle mulch, and that's it for garlic in the garden until next summer.

But I still had to preserve the garlic. I usually can my garlic, since we don't have a basement or root cellar for long-term storage of cloves. This year's harvest was kinda light, about 7.5 lbs altogether.

To can it, I start by chopping it up using a food processor.

Then I parboil it by heating water to boiling, turning off the heat, then adding the chopped garlic and letting it sit for about ten minutes.

Then I drain the pot, reserving the cook water.

I fill the jars with the heated, drained chopped garlic, then later top off the jars with garlic-y cook water.

Scalding the Tattler lids.

I ended up with twelve pints. Garlic is low-acid, of course, so I used the pressure canner.

Adjusted for our elevation, I held it at 12 lbs. pressure for 25 minutes.

During the course of canning it, I heard a loud "PANG" from inside the canner. "Lost a jar," I remarked to Don. Sure enough, after things had cooled down and I removed the canner lid, I had a jar which broke out its bottom. I didn't dare keep the garlic from the jar since I didn't want to risk ground glass. Eh, this stuff happens.

And meanwhile I had 11 other jars of beautifully preserved garlic to last us over the next year.

Gotta love garlic. And canning.

A year's worth of garlic

In August, I harvested the garlic.

Last year I had the durndest time harvesting the garlic. This is because I made the mistake of mulching the bed with old hay ... and the hay grew. Additionally I was fighting a particularly pernicious grass which reproduces vegetatively through long roots.

Unless I can dig out those roots, the grass simply grows back. Breaking the roots into bits just increases the number of rootstocks that can regrow (kind of like that scene from the old movie "Fantasia" with the sorcerer's apprentice where the chopped up broomsticks reform into new broomsticks). It's nasty stuff.

So last year it took me three days to harvest the garlic in this fairly small bed. Most of the time was spent tracing out and removing the roots of those grasses.

So this year I was very very careful to keep the weeds out of the garlic, pulling them as they grew and tracing out grass roots as I found them.

So by the time harvest came, it was simple as pie to dig it all up. Took me only about an hour.

What a contrast to last year. I still had a few weeds...

...but I pulled those (roots and all) as I dug the garlic, so they wouldn't regrow and plague me next year.

The garlic quickly overflowed the bushel basket I was using...

...so I stopped and trimmed the stems from the bulbs, then continued digging more garlic.

An hour later, all done.

The garlic filled the basket about two-thirds full.

After letting the garlic dry for a few days, I sat down in the barn and prepared to trim it. Some people prefer to hang their garlic whole, but since we don't have a root cellar or basement, I've found it's best to preserve the garlic by canning it. Trimming and peeling is the first step.

I grow a German porcelain-neck garlic. Rather than those annoying cloves that get smaller and smaller toward the center, this kind of garlic has large (and sometimes huge) cloves around a central stiff (or "porcelain") stem. It's got a nice bite to it, just as garlic should.

Here's some of the larger cloves next to eggs, for purposes of comparison.

This kind of garlic is fairly easy to peel. It's a pleasant task to sit in the barn for an hour or so at a time and peel garlic. It took me a few days to work through the whole shebang.

Occasionally the chickens would wander over and kind of hang around, keeping me company.

I pulled aside a fair bit of nice cloves...

...then counted out how many I needed, and kept them for re-planting the bed.

Here's all the debris from peeling.

The end result, peeled and ready to wash.

Total weight: 12 pounds.

Then came the laborious task of washing (and sometimes scrubbing) each clove to get the surface and ingrained dirt off. This is really really boring. I did it in stages to make it more tolerable, but it's still boring. If anyone has a better idea for how to wash garlic, I'm all ears.

After this, it was time to can the garlic. I chopped it up in batches.

The garlic shouldn't be cooked, but only parboiled. To do this, I boiled a large pot of water, then turned off the heat and dumped in the chopped garlic for about ten minutes.

While it heated, I got my jars ready. Since garlic is low-acid, of course it needs to be pressure-canned.

I drained the garlic, making sure to save the cook water.

Filling jars with chopped parboiled garlic.

Topping off with cook water.

Wiping the rims, which also lets me check for nicks.

Scalding the Tattler lids.

Then I pulled out my pressure canner. It's the first time I'd used it since I had the gauge checked last February.

Jars in the canner, two layers.

Up to pressure, adjusted for elevation. I kept it here for 25 minutes (pints).

I just love the sight of a finished canning project.

All this chopped canned garlic should be plenty to last us for a year. But if we wanted to look forward to more garlic next summer, I had to get what I'd held back for planting into the ground.

So in late September, I made sure the garlic boat was free of weeds...

...then laid out the cloves to space them evenly.

I had a couple of garlic plants sprouting from some cloves that got left behind when I harvested.

Once the cloves are spaced out, it takes no time at all to plant them. I had some cloves left over, which I gave to a neighbor who was interested in cultivating more garlic.

Then I gave the bed a nice layer of pine needle mulch.

That does it for garlic for the year. Except for (hopefully) some light weeding next summer, I shouldn't have to do much until it's time to harvest again.