Everything grew. Patti and I are still pretty sore from the drive home, but I did finish harvesting my garlic here at home, and made a trip out to the Ness farm to see how things are out there.
Now, finally, we have pollinators around. The bees are tiny. Not honeybees, but some other type of wild bee. Most are only about a quarter of an inch long. Glad to see something at least.
Dug up the rest of my garlic today. A couple hundred heads. Nearly all grown from 2nd generation bulbil propagation, so just now starting to really get some good heads.
This is a bulbil cluster on a garlic plant. They grow from what are called “scapes” in hardneck garlic types.
Each of those tiny bulbs will give you a new garlic plant. Not a big head in the first year, but if you keep replanting the cloves from the subsequent heads of garlic, as you could see above, they size up well in a few years. Also eliminates disease issues you can pick up from only growing out from full sized cloves over many generations.
I had dug about a quarter of my garlic before we left for vacation. It was not quite fully matured. When we got back, some tops had died off completely and the outer paper skins were starting to break down, so when I would attempt to pull the plant, the head would break off under the soil. That is just indicative that they should have been harvested a few days ago. Probably Tuesday or so when we were gone. No harm. Just some extra work loosening soil when digging them up so I would not lose heads.
In the front yard, I had planted a gift I was given this last fall, of Brown German Rocambole garlic. They were bulbills. About a hundred of them. Heads from them were anywhere from the size of a quarter, to some nearly silver dollar size. Impressed me how quickly some of them had sized up. The 2 ounces of garlic bulbills gave me a few pounds of garlic, and plenty for increasing again next year.
Phoebe and I made a trip out to the Ness Farm. I am not physically ready to mow there, and when I am ready it is going to be quite a job, but I wanted to see how things did while we were gone. The cabbage plants have gotten huge, but not really forming heads yet. These are late season cabbages and will not be ready until later fall.
Dry bushing beans have set good amount of pods there.
The U of M cowpea “13” is flowering and setting pods well again.
It is nice how the pods set up over the top of the plant.
I did take the time to weed one of the rows.
Baby Vi Crookneck Squashes are setting wonderfully. All of the plants, both original plantings and the later planting are all full of fruits and flowers.
We are still eating ones fresh from last year. They store great. It is nice having food you can pick, just put on a shelf, and be eating it a year later without any processing for storage.
The variety German squash (C. Maxima) is flowering and setting fruits nicely. Those plants wander, and are no where near as compact as the Baby Vi squash, with vines going out to 15 feet already and still growing.
You find their fruits nestled down in the grass all around the long vines.
Muskmelons, planted later, are crawling all over, and flowering a ton, but I did not see any fruits yet.
I found it interesting that on the Pink Flour corn, there is a great proliferation of tassel anthers which are purple in color. Much darker than on any of the other corns I have out there.
Phoebe found a nice, whole snake skin out there today. Another garter snake one. She mostly had fun exploring while I puttered about.
This is her standing in front of the Blue Speckled Flour selection I made from the Wamneheza. This variety is fully set with ears now, and they just need to mature and dry down.
The corn I am standing in front of is the Pink Flour. Nice sized plants, being about 6 and a half feet tall. You can see a German squash plant which has wandered into the end of the corn patch from its hill a dozen feet away.
Only other thing I weeded there today was the row of 75 rutabagas. They are looking good, but like the cabbage, will not be ready until some point in October.
So there it is. Needs some work, but other than mowing, not much, and I will get to that (hopefully) in a few days.
Nice work Tom. I told you that we have been messing around down here.
Well, I was wondering what we are doing wrong. I tried Congo watermelon.
They set many melons, but all die of rot by the time they reach softball size.
Also planted scallop squash, my personal fave, but that sets all flowers with
no fruit. Crazy summer weather, dry spells, then torrential rain. Suggestions?
I had some rot issues for a variety of reasons. It was cold, wet, and we had squash bugs and slugs which do not do good things to plants. Most resistant for me was the Baby Vi squash. Most every other cucurbit was a near total loss, but since I primarily planted the Baby Vi squash since it had overcome all obstacles in the past, I kind of lucked out in that regard. They were not immune to issues, but they hurt the Baby Vi the least. Too much nitrogen in the soil can give you all male flowers as an FYI, but that could easily not have been the problem this year. Completely composted manure is the best fertilizer for squashes. Much better than liquid or pelletized fertilizers.
Tom
Hey, I want some seeds from the Baby Vi. For next year.
You will get them Dwight. Curious to see how well they do for you where you live.
Tom