Update - Seeds, Garlic, and mint tea

Well, it's been an eventful summer here on my little garden.  The Zucchini I tried I put out too early and it got bitten, and hasn't done well at all.  I'm ready to pull it out when the next flower just drops off.

I ate my first 12in long bean, which was probably a bit early even for it, these things are supposed to get really long.

I picked out all my garlic, let me see if I have a picture somewhere:

I can't stress how helpful these greenhouse posts have been.  They're perfect for hanging the garlic to dry, and also nice for reaching the middle of my raised beds without stepping on the dirt.  Very very awesome.  Notice the garlic bulbs are a little sad, but still it's the first year i've ever tried it, and I put them in late.  Hopefully this years will be better :).

I got out several multiplier onions, all ranging from about ping pong ball to a small baseball size.  Looking forward to putting the ones that last the winter back in in the spring.  A few that came from seed have grown, a couple that look pretty nice, i'll try and grow them all next year to see if any of them are promising.

The lettuce has finally gone to seed, and i've gotten about 200 black seeded simpson seeds so far from 1 plant, we'll see how many i get total, it's not slowing down.  I also got about 100 romaine lettuce seeds, we'll see if they mix at all.  I'm going to plant them pretty soon when I get the zucchini out.

I planted some new kale seeds in the front where there's a lot of shade, we'll see how they do in the summer.  I was planning on planting another plant or so every week to see when the best time to plant kale is in my yard, I'm hoping to get as much kale as possible :).  I'll keep this updated with pictures and all that in it's very own post as things progress

I got some more basil and cilantro planted out in the front yard.  The mint in the front yard is growing well, and one of them isn't, it's odd.  But today I picked some mint, about 5 or 6 sprigs, and boiled them in a few cups of water to have my first herbal tea from the mint.  It's pretty good stuff, with just a little honey.

I'll keep everyone updated with images and all that, but it's been a while since my last post.

Garlic Scapes :) and Garlic flowers

My Martin's Heirloom Garlic bulbils have been growing really well, and pretty much all of them have scapes (well, they did until I cut them all off and attempted to make garlic scape pesto).

I've been reading up how to get garlic to go to seed (not a normal process, normally they go to bulbils or whatever it's called).  I decided to take a few pictures of the process.

One of the things that I've found is that scapes are smaller than i thought, they're a little bigger than a spagetti noodle, but not much.  The heads at the end are about the size of an eraser when I pulled off the outer protecting and began pulling the bulbils out 1 by 1.  It's a hard process, especially with the mosquitoes, and often ends up in a few of the flower heads falling off.  But in the end the bulbils are plucked out and the flowers are left so that they can grow and become seeds.  I'm hopeful that they'll get better and better about going to flower so that i won't have to pull the bulbils out as much.

Anyway, here are the pictures:

Here you can see the scapes on all the garlic.  Note that
because they're bulbils i've been able to place them very very close together.

This is what it looks like before I start pulling
off the bulbils.  I have to cut through the outer
protective layer, and then pluck off the bulbils
one by one.

See how small those little flower buds are?  it's difficult to remove the
bulbils without pinching out the flowers as well.

This is the finished product.  There might be 1 or 2 bulbils deep in
there, hopefully some of the flowers still go to seed.

All in all it takes me about 5 minutes or so a garlic scape.  I've done about 9 of these, and I left on 4 or 5 to grow to bulbils and the rest I cut off to make pesto out of.  It's been a fun little project.

Pictures from the garden, early 2013 - radishes, onions,blueberries, and beets (going to seed)

Hey, I just wanted to get together a bunch of the photos i've been taking here and there in the mornings as I wander round the garden.

Newly planted blueberry bush from lowes (it's now got some
blueberries on it, though i'm not sure if i should pick them off or not, i'll have to look)

My other new blueberry bush

This is a new method i'm trying (lots of work, but it's fun).  The cardboard holds the cups steady, and they're inside a normal black planter box.  These cups have been growing really really well for me.  At some point i'll show you the tomato plants downstairs. These are green peppers, sage, and daisies.

Radishes always do great :).  You can see some of the red bulbs
if you zoom into the picture.  I'm going to leave as many as I can,
6 or 8, to go to seed so i can get radish sprouts.  Sorry about the shadow :) it's early morning

The spinach is starting to come up.  Will have to
thin them a little when I find out which ones are the strongest

I'm happy with the shallots, they're doing well.

This shallot only has 1 onion, but it's the largest stalk by far.
It's even got a little scape growing on it (that's what it's called
for garlic :) not sure what it's called for onions)

these 3 beets are getting ready to start the year

Notice this picture a week or so after the one before,
it's growing well.  These are beets in their 2nd year going to seed.

This is what the early stages of a beet flower looks like.  The beets
are full of these little flower heads getting ready to burst.  Should
get plenty of seeds out of these 3 beets.

Building a raised bed

I've built 4 of these in the past, and so I decided these next 2 should be blogged about :).  The raised beds that I create are 10ft x 4ft and they are 10 inches tall.  I think that 6 inches would be plenty if you have decent soil, but if you're going to be composting a ton, or just adding new soil, then the 10 inches will be nice.  This article is explaining how I build them, and things that i've learned in the process of making these, and i'll have nice photos of you of my latest 2 i'm preparing up to go outside.

Materials Needed

• 2*  10inch x 10 ft boards - i'm using treated in this latest set, i've used just normal pine but i'm sure that will break down in a couple years (which was a great idea for me because my first few weren't very good)
• 1*  10inch x 8 ft board
• 1 box of screws that are 3 or so inches long
• 1 drill with a drill bit roughly the size of the screws you got

Price per box

Not counting the drill and what not the boards ended up costing me $35 per raised bed.  I always build them in sets of 2 because my garden is 20ft wide.

Things to consider

• Most importantly get boards that are straight.  Some of the ones i got were warped, and they still don't lay quite right, it's definitely worth the few minutes to go through and pick out the best boards you can find.
• Lowes, and I believe any other hardware store, will cut the boards for you, make sure that the 2 10ft boards are exactly the same length, and have the 8ft board cut down to 2 4ft pieces.  Just make sure that the 4ft pieces are exactly the same width.  The people at the store are happy to make the cuts for you, and they like making sure their work is good, it's why they work there.  Let them do it :)
• you may need to level out your ground, there are several ways to do this, look into an A frame level, or there's another one that uses hoses and what not which is probably easier to build I just don't remember the name right now :) when i build one to level out my land i'll make a post about it.
• Build the frame on a level surface, a living room works perfectly :).

How to build

This is harder to explain, and easier to come up with your own ways to do :).  The thing to pay really good attention to though is to make sure that you use a square on the corners to try and get as close to 90 degrees as possible.  I will often use one of the other boards because i don't have a square, but anything that you know is a perfect square (or close enough) can be used, just make sure that the edges line up nice and even.

Be sure to drill the holes in the side of the boards where you'll screw it to the other board.  When I didn't do this it made it extremely difficult to screw in, and worse split the wood several times.  Drilling the holes lets u line up things nicely and helps to keep everything even.  Make sure to only tighten the screws when you know everything is lined up nicely.  

My first time creating these I didn't follow any of these points, and my finished products were off by a few inches, which with boxes this large ends up meaning I can't get the boxes to be flat, and soil will often spil out the sides.

What does the finished product look like?

(insert photos here when i find my camera :))

Building a compost bin

Last night I decided to build a compost bin.  We have a large pile in the back yard that has tons of grass and leaves and all my dead plants from this years planting.  He's been kind of composting, but I decided I wanted to build a bin that would help it compost a little quicker.

I'll eventually find the youtube video, but I saw a video that talked about which compost bin works the best.  The one that won the whole thing ended up being a thick plastic hoop, and so I decided to build one just like it.

I started out with plastic garden fencing, this isn't the exact stuff i got but basically is :).  I also got some bailing wire.  Then I cut enough to make a 4 or 5 foot diameter cylender, and used the bailing wire to tie the ends together.  So now, in the end I have a roughly 4ft x 4ft cylendar, a little over a cubic yard.

I had a really hard time getting it to stand up at first, next time i'd likely use either posts, or metal fencing to make it work out better, live and learn i guess :).  However, I kept adding all the stuff in my composting pile and added it to the cylinder.  And found that I have lots of nice compost at the bottom of the pile :), lots of worms, and 1 pretty nasty looking spider.

I'll try and take weekly pictures of the compost pile just to record how things shrink and decompose.

Picture Log:

12-22-2012 (day 1)  The fork shows the height (the bin is 4ft tall)

Planting Martin's garlic bulbils

I've gone slightly crazy since i first started learning about garlic.  I've found a variety called Martin's Heirloom Garlic, and it seems pretty exciting.  The bulbs are some of the largest ones, and the bulbils themselves are the largest i've seen.

How do bulbils work?
A bulbil is kind of like a seed for garlic.  It's not true seed, I might talk about true seeds later as I try to get garlic to grow some, it's a cumbersome process but will allow me to "breed" my own personal garlic type.  But bulbils are exact copies of the parent, so they will grow to be the same basic garlic bulb.  The only difference between cloves and bulbils is that bulbils can take 3 years to grow properly.  Well this is year one :).  Martin's are said to only require 2 years to grow, so that's exciting.

Here's a picture of some of the bulbils I got in the mail today (planting tomorrow)

They're like large corn kernels.  Very nice, i'm excited to see how they do, and I'll keep you guys up to date.

Why would you want to grow from bulbils?
If bulbils take 2 or 3  years to grow, and cloves only take 1 year, why would you want to do bulbils?  From most hard neck garlic you get anywhere from 4 to sometimes as many as 12 cloves.  On the other hand, if you let them go to "seed" and grow bulbils, you can get the same 4 to 12 cloves (though depending on the type they'll be smaller) and you also can get 15, 30, or sometimes as much as 100 bulbils.  Honestly though, to me the main reason to do bulbils is because they're way way cheaper to start :), and that's a great way to start into something you're not yet sure you'll be good at.

I'll add another picture when I get them planted, and hopefully a few throughout the season as they grow, and definitely pictures at the end of the season to show what the harvest is like :).


UPDATE Saturday Dec 1, 2012

I got them planted, they took up almost 4ft x 4ft.  I planted several bulbils inside under my grow lights, these will take the place of any that may die in the ground this year.  If all of them make it :) then i guess i'll take room from somewhere else :).

Here's some pictures of the finished product.

This is where my peas were last year, we'll be planting them in the rows this year that my wife is planning on working in.  Note the "tool" that i'm using here.  It's a dowel that I have measured out nicely to help with planting plants that need 8in, 2in, or 16in spacing.  It also happens to be the right size to fit martin's bulbils in.  I found it much easier to poke all the holes at once rather than one at a time.

I'll take more pictures as the garlic grows.

New pictures :).  These are the ones I planted in doors.  Here's the data:

11-30-12: Planted 36 Martin's Garlic indoors

12-10-12 (10 days): First martin sprouted

12-12-12 (12 days): 2nd and 3rd sprouted

12-14-12 (14 days): 4th and 5th sprouted.

Here are pictures as of 12-14-12:

A little blurry, these are #2 on the
left, and #1 on the right.

About 2 or so inches tall

They're doing pretty good so far, we'll see how it goes.