Garlic and Shallots Planted

First and foremost - Happy Halloween!!  Normally we do our pumpkin carving about a week ahead of time but this year we were rather late - I didn't finish mine until yesterday:

Boo!
 

My garden is still such a mess - it is indeed a scary sight.  But it has been such a busy year in the garden with the expansion, that I'm going to cut myself a little slack on that front.

The Stratford Garlic Festival

Back in the first weekend of September, I took my son to the Stratford Garlic Festival.

 

I had been meaning to go to this festival for several years but I was either too busy or I would completely forget about it until garlic planting time was just around the corner and, of course, the festival was long over by that point.  Well, this year I finally made it out…and it was well worth it.

Harvest Monday - October 27, 2014

Green, green and green – well, purplish green actually.  Not exactly that much variety in colour.  But pretty soon the fresh produce will be all done and so I am savoring every bit of green that comes out of the garden right now.

First up this week is the Mei Qing choi.

 

Mei Qing Choi
 

Harvest Monday - October 20, 2014

We had some wonderful weather in the past week.  Well, kind of wonderful.  The temps were fantastic – one day even got to 21°C (70°F) and it was 27° (80°F) with the humidity!  But we also had a lot of rain so my garden chores kept being put off.

But now we are back to more seasonal low teens & single digit weather (around 46°F +/- 10 degrees).
I finally got around to putting away all the hoses and blowing out the drip irrigation lines – of course, I picked one of the chilliest and windiest days to do that.  Hopefully one of these years I will get my act together and do my garden cleanup before jacket and glove weather kicks in.

So on to Harvest Monday.  This week I harvested the last of the lettuce.

Sierra MI - Last of the Lettuce
 

These are still from plants that I sowed WAY back in July, believe it or not.  The Pinares and Simpson Elite have long since bolted but the Sierra MI just kept chugging along.  Good thing too as I never did get around to that fall sowing I was planning to do in late August.

Soil and My Weed Nemesis

In a prior post, I mentioned how I had yet to move a large chunk of soil off my driveway.  After I filled my new beds earlier in the summer, the leftover triple mix basically sat undisturbed under a tarp.

 

I had been meaning to move it to the top of the hill all summer (which is where I am planning on building 4 new beds for next year) but just never got around to it.  I barely gave that blue tarp in the driveway a second thought, although it did seem to be looking a bit “lumpy”.  Well, a couple of weeks ago I took off the tarp and this is what it looked like:

 

Where's the Soil?
 

Harvest Monday - October 13, 2014

Happy Thanksgiving!  If you’re Canadian, that is - if you're in the United States, Happy Columbus Day!

So today is the Thanksgiving holiday here in Canada.  Our family celebrated last night as we find it much more convenient to have our get-together the day BEFORE the actual holiday.  There is plenty of time for preparations on Saturday and Sunday morning, we have a wonderful, leisurely family dinner on Sunday evening and then Monday is a day of relaxation and preparing for the week ahead.

And since the shops are open on Sunday but not on Monday, having dinner on Sunday evening means less stress for me because I will inevitably realize that I am missing a key ingredient, just as I start to cook - my husband is always on standby ;)

So on to the harvest.

Broccoli.  That’s it.  Really.

I made a wonderful room temperature broccoli with roasted garlic oil from one of Ina Garten’s cookbooks and it was served as part of our Thanksgiving dinner.  There were only enough mature heads to allow for a good spoonful per person and I cooked it a bit too long - I keep forgetting that homegrown produce is so much more tender than store bought - but everyone loved it nonetheless.

Broccoli with Roasted Garlic Oil
 

Harvest Monday - October 6, 2014

Not a whole lot to report this week – I have a feeling that this will be the standard theme until winter sets in.

One notable exception to the same ol’ same ol’…another first for me.  Broccoli.

First Head of Packman Broccoli

Onions 2014 - The Results

Back in mid-to-late August I pulled the onions from the ground.  I left them as they were, removing only large clods of soil, and placed them on the drying rack to cure.  About two weeks ago I started to clean them up and, as I was doing so, I started to notice damage like this:

Damage on Copra Onion

This was the same type of damage that was evident on the golden shallots a couple of months ago.  And, just as with the shallots, I didn’t recall seeing any damage when I had pulled the onions.  Mind you, the soil that still clung to them likely concealed some of it and I wasn’t actively looking for damage – after all, alliums are one of the most carefree crops to grow & are rarely bothered by pests, right?