Garlic

I think this year may be the latest year for harvesting garlic. I still only have about 1-3 dead leaves on the bottom. I don't mind waiting until three leaves on all of them are brown. But the leaves at the top seemed to be getting brown faster than the ones on the bottom. That's not good. So I picked them all.

I had a good amount of large heads this year. I think I'll end up with better numbers than last year. Which is good as my townhouse mates can eat garlic like it is going out of style. I think they eat more of my harvest then I do.

I left the garlic to dry off for the morning on the brick path. I wanted to get the soil dry so I could knock most of it off.

For the next two to three weeks it will be drying in the shed. Usually I start to hear vampire jokes at this time as the shed reeks of garlic. I might nab a head or two before they are done drying if I need them for the kitchen.

Now I have part of a bed that is empty. My schedule says that I'll be planting mustard in here. Part of me wants to change that and plant bok choy. But I'm not sure what would be more useful. I liked the idea of mustard as I put carrot in this bed next year, but the mustard did not keep down the nematodes like I was hoping. And they attracted cutworms which cut down my carrot production. Maybe I'll think about it for a day or two as I let the neighborhood birds eat any bugs in the bed.

Farther back in the bed are my onions. The garlic was pretty late to die back this year. But the onions were knocked down by the wind a bit early this year. The only onions down are the Copra, my main storage onion. Not all of them are down, but most of them are. In addition the Camelot shallots are also partly down. In another week I'll have to think about building my drying rack over the compost/leaf bins.