Hilltop Beds

In keeping with my "cutting back" strategy this year, I only planted up three of the six annual veg beds on the hilltop.

One bed contained the garlic, which was harvested a couple of weeks ago (I wrote about it in THIS post) and is currently drying in the garage.

A BT Convert

 

So this year, I decided to try something new in the brassica bed.  Instead of the usual netting, I decided to try using BT (Bacillus thuringiensis) to keep the cabbage worms at bay.

So far, I've harvested over 11 lbs. of Aspabroc from the 4 plants I'm growing

This was not so much brought about by my desire to try something new, but rather the fact that the netting for this bed had torn.  Both the broccoli and onions have special netting as they are too tall for the standard size.  In both cases, I have to sew two lengths of netting together to get the required height.

This spring, I realized that one of the nets was torn and would require serious patching (i.e. sewing).  The onions took priority so they received the intact netting.  The brassica bed (which this season holds broccoli and some newly sown kohlrabi & cabbage) was covered with the smaller netting until the broccoli grew too large, at which point I removed the netting.  I then waited until I saw cabbage worm activity to apply BT, an organic solution which only affects caterpillars.

Garlic Harvest - First Impressions

This morning, I harvested the garlic - it's always one of the hilights of the season as you just never know what you will get.  As with most root crops such as potatoes & carrots, the "surprise" factor is always fun.

Ready to Harvest

This year, I let the garlic mature a bit longer than I normally would - I had been meaning to harvest it for the past week, but just never got around to it.

I try to harvest the garlic when the bottom 2-3 leaves die down, but this time, the bottom 4-5 leaves were dried up and/or yellow on all the varieties, with yellowing reaching most of the top leaves.