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Last year I grew garlic for the first time. It was a trial that I wasn’t sure was going to be successful. I planted two varieties in mid-October last year — Inchelium Red Organic and Belarus, both from Territorial Seed. I mostly neglected the beds this year and harvested in August (a bit late). The result was mostly successful.

I discovered that the hardneck grew much better than the softneck — I’m not sure why this is, but they were in different beds, so it may just be that. I also discovered that I had a few tiny bulbs that seemed to be because there was a hard clump of soil or a weed root next to the bulb. I vowed to do a better job this year of tilling the beds and staying on top of the weeding.

Today I blended some peat moss and compost into the soil and weeded it, then planted the garlic. I selected some of the best heads of the Inchelium Red and Belarus that I grew last season and replanted them — one of the best things about growing garlic. I also ordered a new variety of hardneck garlic from Territorial Seed, Chesnok Red.

I can’t wait to see how it turns out this time.

I started my seeds! (61/365)

Foggy and wet day, bright daffodil. (62/365)

I was sick for days, finally took a sick day and … cleaned the sewing table. (63/365)

Ginger is so excited! (64/365)

My protector on a gorgeous spring afternoon. (65/365)

My seedlings are growing like mad! (66/365)

Claw hangs out on the deck while I weed. (67/365)

60°F temps followed by a front that dropped us below freezing, icing the pond over. (68/365)

The most fabulous color! (69/365)

I’m working on the vegetable garden plans. I’ve never had a vegetable garden in the PNW– only in the mid-Atlantic.

The weather here is quite different, so while N wants tomatoes and eggplant, I am tempering their likely demise with things that I know should do well here — greens, root vegetables, broccoli, beans, peas.

We’ll see how the season grows!

Last weekend, we cleaned up the leaves in the yard, knowing full well that we would have another leaf-raking episode in a couple of weeks.

Everything was fine until I was carrying the bags of leaves out to the street and slipped on a piece of wet wood. Ouch. I’m still suffering from the effects of that fall, but the yard is full of leaves again.

I guess I’ll be raking next weekend or so.

I have no clue what this bush/tree is. I love the color. It suddenly appeared one morning while I was out with the dogs and now I visit it every day.

My girl’s stub:

In stark contrast to her giraffe-like neck:

bleeding heart (dicentra)

I fought and fought trying to get the photo I wanted. This isn’t it. I’ll try again.

ginger

There’s always dogs instead.

a tiny radish [flickr]

I had a fairly decent garden over the summer and when the weather started to slightly cool off, I decided I would try planting some fall vegetables. Spinach, mesclun, snow peas, sugar snap peas, and radishes.

The spinach does not seem to like the dirt or possibly got too much water. The peas never germinated [?! old seeds?]. The mesclun has grown fine, but I think I need to plant a lot more than I did (and I thought I planted too much).

As for the radishes, well… It’s November first and they are tiny. I think the problem with them is that I did not plant enough of them and I didn’t thin them out as much as I should have. That said, I ate that tiny one and it sure tasted good! I’ll try growing them again, maybe in spring next time.