Category: alliums

New year’s harvest

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The weather warmed up and it wasn’t raining, yet. So Sam and I spur-of-the-moment decided to dig up the rest of the potatoes. It was an adventure. Exciting to find these big tubers glowing in the partly frozen ground under mounds of hay mulch. The varieties are Katahdin (white), Adirondack Blue and Adirondack Red. Maybe next season, less colors and more white. There’s something unnerving about finding red and blue colors in your food.

Potatoes for the new year

These are now drying on a table inside under cardboard. Then they will go into cold storage in the pantry.

And then for good measure, we dug up a patch of very dirty leeks. I did not want to do this, but Sam forged ahead. I didn’t think there would be anything salvageable, but after a few slimy layers were scraped off, there was another bunch of perfectly good leeks for the fridge.

Leeks in a five-gallon bucket, before washing and cleaning

Yep, it’s winter

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It’s cold. After a warm November that lulled me into laziness. I didn’t get everything done in the garden. So some things froze that aren’t supposed to. Granted, I don’t really have the infrastructure needed to keep greens in the main garden. That would probably be cold frames. The row cover is not adequate. That’s the way it goes.

Frozen mizuna, maybe still edible?
Frozen leeks
Frozen broccoli rabe
Kale patch. I’ve seen this start to grow and then go to seed in the spring, so I had planned to leave this. I did harvest the chard next to it, and we’re still eating it.

The dried heads of various flowers are interesting this time of year. A variety of browns and all different textures. I don’t cut them back until spring so they can provide cover or whatever for creatures that might depend on them.

Tansy
Goldenrod
Autumn Joy sedum
Spirea – meadowsweet (I think)
Monarda fistulosa

And I spotted these sweet little cups when cutting back fronds in the asparagus bed. They are growing on bits of straw. The largest is maybe 1/4 inch wide.

Bird’s nest fungus?

Lotta leeks…and beets

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Sam helped me harvest at the community garden today. He dug the leeks and I dug beets. Then I processed them back at home. A messy muddy task.

What was I thinking! This is a huge quantity of leeks. And there are more in the home garden. I will have to look for more leek recipes.

The beets seem more reasonable in volume. A good selection of medium ones and another of baby beets. A few greens were harvested, but most were not edible.

And this always seems to happen. No matter how painstakingly I try to harvest all the onions and shallots, some slip by. I found this glowing plateful today.

Garlic planted

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It’s a relief to have this done. I planted half on November 1st and the rest on November 2nd. Approximately 220 cloves. The soil was pretty good, although somewhat wet from the weekend’s rain. I believe the varieties were German Extra Hardy, German Red (smaller), then Music. I don’t think I saved any of the Spanish Roja.

This is the first year I have had enough to save my own seed garlic. Garlic is one of my success stories. But I still felt anxiety planting it, fears that something will cause my garlic crop to fail. It’s the climate crisis, affecting everything, even my trust in the most reliable of crops.

Onion harvest

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It is a true pleasure to admire my harvested onions, all cleaned and separated by color. I’ve been purchasing the Gardener’s Medley onions for the past few years from Fedco. It contains 150 little plants of white, red, and yellow onions. I plant them in one of the plots we have at the community garden. They really grow well. I think they would grow better if I watered them more often (goals).

These should really be hung up in a cool place for winter storage, but for now I’m enjoying having a huge abundance of homegrown onions to choose from for dinner.

Allium family

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This is my harvest of yellow onions on the Community Garden. I pulled them out of the ground because most were falling over. They are curing for a few days while the weather forecast is predicting warm and sunny.

Curiously, the red and white varieties are still growing and haven’t fallen over. Interesting.

Yellow onion crop

I decided to fill in the trough these leeks were growing in. I think the trough is supposed to aid in blanching the bottom of the leek plant to provide a longer white stem, good for eating. These plants finally look healthy, after a rough start from an overgrown pot of seedlings that I rescued.

Late-planted leeks

Potting up tomatoes

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The tomato seedlings have a good set of second leaves and are ready for potting. We did half of them today – that’s 40 seedlings.

Other seedlings being nursed along: eggplant, peppers (not germinated yet), tomatillo, ground cherry (not germinated), celery leaf and shallots. The leeks and borrettana cippollini onions have been planted out.

Tomato potting operation
Sturdy Amish Paste seedling
Top row tomatillo, bottom row eggplant
Shallots and celery leaf

Remulching the garlic

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I really enjoy the garlic crop. It’s so reliable. I take the mulch off to give the sprouts a chance to develop and declare themselves. Then I tuck the mulch back around them. Like tucking them back into bed. Maybe someday I’ll interplant something around them, but for now this is working.

Here’s a view of the unmulched bed on the left and the mulched bed on the right. Just reused the same hay mulch, which has already broken down quite a bit over the winter. So it is easy to grab handfuls and tuck. I handle the green leaves minimally when I have to pull them out of the hay. They feel so fresh and new.

Regarding hay carrying weed seeds and therefore not preferred for mulch – I have heard this from many many sources, but I’ve never found it to be the case. We’ve put a lot of hay on the garden over the years. Maybe it’s because we pile it on pretty thick. But isn’t that the point of mulch?

Still working on the big section in the middle. Excess mulch is on the ground outside the bed. Maybe I’ll add more.