Wednesday, October 19, 2011

autumn garden notes

gilfeather turnips
I took a walk down to our field garden today. It's the garden that's so far away that we often go a full week without checking in. We have some gilfeather turnips that are ready whenever we are, but i'm waiting for Thanksgiving. I love looking around our gardens and seeing things that will end up on our thanksgiving table: tiny brussels sprouts, leeks, sage, and kale.

The winter rye cover crop we planted is doing well. You can see it in this photo growing all around the turnips. I have to say that the morton oats we broadcast on the left side of the garden did not germinate as well.

Next week, we'll plant our garlic. We've been holding out because it's been warmer than usual and we don't want the cloves to germinate and grow too much before the winter snow cover. I recently came across this article on garlic and really enjoyed it. Everything you need to know right in one place. Our seed garlic from Fedco arrived recently too. We're planting five different varieties as we want to do a taste test and find our favorites. And we really would love to be garlic farmers one day. Here's what we're planting:

Georgian Fire
German Extra-Hardy
Music
Phillips
Russian Red

How about you? Are you planting garlic this year?

cherry belles

I couldn't leave the garden without taking back a snack. three pretty little cherry belle radishes. a nice treat.

7 comments:

  1. Hiya!

    I love, love, love your blog. So beautiful and inspiring.

    I blogged radishes today, too! :) & just wanted to let you know I gave Tend a wee 'shout out':

    Thanks for making such a beautiful blog. x Helen

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  2. you just reminded me that i have radishes in the fridge from the farmers market. yum.

    for garlic, this year i am trying spanish roja from baker creek and erik's german white from seed savers. thank you for the link to that article - it is very thorough.

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  3. My husband and I just bought our first house and last weekend we had a sod cutter come and cut the grass from the garden location, this weekend we're rototilling and then the following weekend garlic will be going in the ground. I am so excited....my dad is as well, I will no longer be stealing from his garlic rows! :)

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  4. http://down---to---earth.blogspot.com/ is also talking about garlic today,lots of awful garlic out there!. Ours is getting close to harvest time (December) but we're still eating last years haul. My favourite thing to grow in the vegie patch, it stores sooooo well!

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  5. I hadn't planned on garlic this year, I'm strangely intimidated. But I might have just the spot ... and if it's not too late....count me in!

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  6. Oh you lucky, brussels sprouts!
    We did plant garlic a couple weeks ago. Maybe we should have waited? Oh well.

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  7. I planted garlic this year for the first time (Spanish Roja) and am so excited with it! Thanks so much for that article link -- I've bookmarked it for next year's in-depth instruction! Makes me feel a little more confident about growing garlic!

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