You know you’ve had a successful harvest if you still have some of last year’s produce in storage when the new stuff needs to be pulled. I still have about a pound, maybe more, of garlic from 2008 so I did the head-scratching routine of “was I stingy with garlic this last year?” I answered that in the negative; we had our fair courses of garlic soup, and enough homemade aioli to keep any vampire far away. There were also plenty of heads to replant.
“Enough,” or even “adequate,” are tough nuts to crack when you’re growing your own. It will either be a while before you hit that goal, or you’ll overshoot it and will feel pangs of guilt every time you open the freezer and see all those bags of broccoli, broccoli your family picks at if you serve it to them. There is a happy medium in there, one in which you don’t feel like the food is overly precious or overly expendable. And it will take you a year or two of doing this before you discover that sweet spot.
All cleaned up and ready for eating
But back to the garlic. It was another good year for garlic, a crop I discovered does best when grown in the greenhouse, last hardneck batches sown on New Year’s Day. It’s an indispensable kitchen item in this house; it, and parsley, populate every supper dish, or near enough. I am thankful for a good harvest.
(And yes, some of it will be available in the seed trade.)
Part of last year’s squash haul
Glad you came to visit!
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fast grow the weeds 