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Backyardnotes

~ All things botanical in photos and words—in my West Seattle garden and elsewhere; seeing and creating art and assorted musings.

Backyardnotes

Category Archives: Planting

PLANTING GARLIC?

21 Sunday Oct 2012

Posted by backyardnotes in Cooking & Eating, Fall, Planting

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fall planting, garlic, olive oil & garlic, planting garlic, poaching garlic, roasted garlic

Garlic cloves ready for planting.

NOW IS THE TIME TO PLANT GARLIC– at least here in the Pacific Northwest, for mid-summer harvesting. For the last four years or so I have been planting five varieties: Inchelium Red, Chesnok and three unknown varieties; one softneck and two hardneck types started from one head each, originally grown by friends. I plant 25 cloves of each variety. It typically takes 2-3 heads to provide the largest cloves.

Sweet, poached garlic.

After planting the largest cloves I am left with a lot of medium and small sized cloves to use up.

Garlic cloves poaching in olive oil with bay leaves.

My solution for using all those orphaned cloves is to poach all them very slowly in olive oil until they are meltingly soft (place all the skin-on cloves in a heavy pan or metal bowl; cover with a lid and shake like mad. The skins pop off!). Use bay leaves as I did or any other herb of choice for a little extra flavor if it suits you. I end up with two wonderful products: garlic flavored oil (refrigerate) and soft, sweet cloves to mash into just about anything you would use roasted garlic for.

Happy planting!

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PLANTING THE FALL VEGETABLE GARDEN

05 Wednesday Sep 2012

Posted by backyardnotes in Planting, Vegetable garden

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Buttercup squash, food, lettuce seed, mustard greens, plants, radish, Rescue Pear, seedlings, solarizing soil, Spartan Apple, vegetable garden, vegetable seeds, volunteer seedlings

ANTICIPATION IS SOWN WITH EACH SEED THAT GOES INTO THE GROUND. With the first sign of germination is the hope that success and sustenance may be in the offing. No seeds deliver like those of the radish family, pushing up through the soil within three days of planting. Carrots, onions and celery on the other hand come with hand wringing and second-guessing since they can take up to 21 or more days to pop through the soil.

MY vacation from gardening now effectively over, soil prep and direct seeding began the first week of August as there is plenty of time here for late fall-early winter harvesting of many vegetables and many overwinter nicely around here.

When I put the garden to bed before our long trip I used heavy black plastic to keep the weeds from taking over. And so far, the only unwanted seeds that have sprouted are squash, melon and tomato seeds from the compost that I laid down for the fall garden. Weeds are blessedly absent!

Volunteer squash seedling

Although it is really late in the season to see any productivity from these volunteers, I have left a few of the squash (melon? cucumber?) seedlings to see what develops.

The volunteer(s) 28 days later and still an unknown.

Arugula seedlings, like radishes up quick!

Carrot seedlings, germinating over a period of 8 to 21 days

Direct seeded: Beets (3 types), turnips ((2), carrots (3), radishes (5), fennel (2), kohlrabi, kale (3), chard (3), arugula, dill, Chinese/Napa type cabbage (2), radicchio, Asian type mustard greens (3), Walla Walla onion (for transplanting in February), and a big mix of a lot of lettuce seed that is anywhere between 10 and 2 years old (kind of my own mesclun mix to see what actually germinates.) In my experience lettuce seed seems to have the shortest viability of all vegetable seed.

Red cabbage start from the nursery

I also started a number of brassicas, some chicories (endive, escarole, etc), and a few lettuces in six-packs just now ready for transplanting. Thankfully mornings are cool this time of year, perfect for transplanting. I also purchased a six-pack each of purple cauliflower and red cabbage a couple weeks ago that had a big head start on my starts.

Buttercup squash

I planted some squash seeds when I set out the tomato plants and this buttercup squash is the only one to have germinated and survived in our absence. It is happily crawling up the tomato trellis and there are three squash so far. And the half-dozen tomato plants have produced tomatoes in spite of the lack of regular water and pruning for seven weeks. Hurray, all is not lost.

The vegetable garden, week five–anticipation rewarded!

Rescue Pear

The pears are lovely and large again this year even without thinning. The Akane apples are a total loss due to the apple maggot but we have lucked out with the Spartans which are sweet-tart, crisp and picture perfect!

Spartan apples

Now all that’s left to do is harvest some tomatoes, apples and pears and plant garlic and fava beans next month.

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WHAT HAPPENS WHEN SUMMER ROLLS IN

03 Sunday Jul 2011

Posted by backyardnotes in Planting, Travel

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SUMMER FINALLY ARRIVED HERE with fits and starts. One herald of the season is the hatching of tiny yellow spiderlings that bunch up in tight little knots and… then spread out on gossamer threads–everywhere, like the ones above that I captured as the sun was setting.

Another herald of summer is the beginning of the garden tour season. I went to the Wallingford neighborhood on June 6th where I saw something new, the embothrium coccineum, Chilean Firebush (above) a very tall and flamboyantly flowering tree. I was dazzled and saw a second one near the end of the tour and then again on the Whidbey Island Garden Tour at the end of the month!

I saw a couple of interesting garden ideas on the tour.This fence employed a clever use of old garden tools.

And this was an attractive and creative way to recycle old mattress springs.

So dear reader, the garden, garden tours and a bit of travel took precedence over my additions to the blogosphere. I managed to finally plant all my pepper, eggplant and tomato starts after the late harvest of fava beans. The tomatoes went into the ground the latest ever on June 26th!!

Meanwhile, poppies bloomed,

We took a trip up the Columbia River and spent a couple of nights at Crow Butte where we saw lots of wildflowers in bloom

including yellow flowered opuntia fragilis, a favorite of grasshoppers.

And our last stop was at Palouse Falls, just north of the Snake River and a part of the Channeled Scablands of the Columbia River Basin.

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SUMMER IN SEATTLE, DAY TWO

22 Tuesday Jun 2010

Posted by backyardnotes in Peppers, Planting, Summer!, Tomatoes, Transplanting, Vegetable garden, West Seattle garden

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ON THE SECOND DAY OF SUMMER THE WEATHER IS FAIR AND WARM! Out into the vegetable garden around 8:00 a.m. this morning to transplant the eggplant, tomato, and pepper plants into their summer homes. Watered them all in and I was done by 11:30 a.m., another chore checked off of the list! Now the waiting begins and hope for warm weather throughout the summer.

Now I can go to Whidbey Island on Friday with a clear conscience. My friend Betty has invited me to preview the Whidbey Island Garden Tour. Betty volunteers for the event and the volunteers have Friday to preview the gardens. I have looked forward to it since Betty first invited me three years ago. I get to spend a nice afternoon with a friend I admire and see other people’s gardens. And Betty’s evolving garden too!

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