Garlic Harvest

My garlic patch grew quickly this year.  I think they came up some time in late February and looked beautiful and green during the cooler months of early spring.  Once the heat of summer hit they quickly started turning brown from the bottom leaves up.  The softneck varieties were the first to go and once most of them turned brown I decided that I shouldn't wait any longer to dig them up.  Meanwhile the hardneck varieties were still chugging along.  They had just begun to flower, so I harvested the unopened scapes and then dug them up as well.  This variety still had about half of their leaves green when I pulled them, so they should cure nicely.  I left them to dry in the sun for a couple of hours before I brought them in to finish curing indoors.  I counted about 80 heads of garlic in total which should keep me in garlic until next years harvest.  I will save the biggest cloves for planting in the fall.  The smallest cloves will most likely be dehydrated when I have time in the winter and be made into garlic powder as needed for the rest of the year.  There were a lot of smaller heads this year, but I think the quantity I have will make up for that.  Over all I am very pleased with this harvest.

Garden Rotations - Thinking About the Plan.

The spring harvests have been on the light side.  Mostly I can pick enough lettuce or spinach for a dinner salad, or kale for a side dish.  In the last week though I have found that my broccoli has formed small heads that unfortunately I had to harvest early.  They want to bolt shortly after they begin to form, so I have cut a couple off and am hoping to do better harvesting the smaller side shoots.  I have also been picking the occasional handful of peas to add to my dishes, though they are suffering from the heat as well.  They have been putting out small pods and seem to be trying to ripen as quickly as possible.  I will probably end up pulling them out of that bed along with the spinach that is bolting and becoming bitter.  I was thinking about planting my fall garlic in this bed, but there will a gap of several months before I can do that.  In the meantime, I might fill it in with another patch of carrots and turnips - something that will be harvested by fall.

The next thing that I will be pulling is the garlic patch.  I had some chopped up scapes in a stir fry and they were tender and delicious!  The majority of the garlic leaves are quickly turning brown and I hope to start pulling it sometime this weekend.  Once this bed is pulled I think I might try planting a crop of cabbages here.

The onions have begun to form their bulbs and I hope they fill out in the next few weeks.  I hope to use this bed to grow a crop of fall peas.  Hopefully I can squeeze in a second harvest of peas before winter sets in.

The three different varieties of potatoes have been flowering for the past couple of weeks, so I know that they have started to form tubers beneath the soil.  I hope they stay growing long enough to make some good sized potatoes.  I may steal some new potatoes in the next couple of weeks, but I want the main crop to be harvested after the plants die back, so I can be sure they will store well.  If I harvest them by late July or early August I will probably try planting a fall crop of lettuce and spinach in these beds.

If all goes well in the garden this summer I think I will produce some really good sized crops of a wide variety of vegetables.  I will be thrilled if I can get two crops from one bed during my growing season.  Like having twice the garden in half the space!  And the best part will be going no further than my backyard to get some groceries!

Latest Project: Heavy Mulching

The weeds are really ramping up their growth now that the weather has decided that it's summer.  I have been trying to keep up with the beds themselves and have been doing a decent job of it.  The earlier mulches that I laid down after planting really seem to have made a difference  in the amount ot weeds that pop up in a bed.  The heaviest mulched beds have the fewest weeds.

The areas that I have had trouble keeping up with are the walking paths between the beds.  These paths were mulched with straw shortly after the garden was tilled, so there haven't been a ton of weeds.  There have been some pretty windy days that blew alot of this mulch layer away, and in those areas, I can pull weeds every day and not keep up.

My answer to that of course is to add more mulch!  I was lucky enough to score a truckload of free grass clippings and had it delivered right to my own driveway.  This big pile is going to cover a lot of ground in the garden and should drastically reduce the amount of weeding that I have to do in the pathways from now on.

The first thing I did in each pathway was to weed mercilessly.  I pulled up every green non garden thing that I could see, doing the best I could to get the whole plants out of the ground, roots and all.  This is one of the paths before and after weeding:

Once I eliminated as many weeds as possible I then added a layer of mulch over the path that was several inches thick

 The thick mulch will block light from reaching weed seeds in the soil and will help to trap moisture in the soil between the rows.  It will be nice to not walk in mud anymore when I walk through the garden after it's been watered.  The grass clippings will slowly break down on the soil and add nutrients for the surrounding garden plants.  By next year I should have a nice little layer of humus building up in my garden which will help it grow big and tasty!

Ouray Perimeter Trail

Today was a hot one and I didn't have to work, so I decided I needed to go for a little hike.  The best place to hike around here when it's hot out is anywhere with a higher elevation because it will always be at least 10 degrees cooler up there than down in the valley.  I haven't been able to do much hiking yet this year, and I thought I might start getting myself in better shape for hiking season, so I went to Ouray which is only about 8000 feet so it seemed like it would be a good place to start.  I already live at 6000 feet, so it wasn't a huge change in elevation.

The trail itself does have some very steep sections, but the views once you get to a high point are outstanding!

There are waterfalls all over this little valley and in the span of a few hours we were able to hike to two of them.  The first one was Cascade Falls.

The falls descend into a rocky creek.

It was very windy up on the trail and as we hiked closer to the falls we were sprinkled with mist blowing on the breeze.  We rested and had lunch at the base of the falls in a tall, shady grove of pine trees.  I have to say that this has to be one of the nicest places I have ever eaten lunch on a hot summer day.

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After taking a break, we decided to change course and take a short cut through town to some of the other waterfalls in the valley.  The trail on this side of the valley was also quite steep and I was pretty tired once we reached this little bridge.

The view up and down Canyon Creek was quite beautiful as well.

This was a nice overlook above the town of Ouray.  Across the valley I could see Cascade falls to the left and the crescent of mountains that form the Amphitheater on the right.

 I feel so lucky to live so close a place this beautiful.

Spinning: Finishing the Sunset Yarn

During the heat of the day on my days off, I spend a little time in the cooler indoors working on some non - garden related projects.  My latest project that I have actually been wanting to finish for several months is my Sunset yarn.  I finished plying one skein of it a couple of months ago, but had only intermittently been able to spin the rest of the fiber.  Last week I finally finished spinning it.  This week I was able to ply it into yarn.

The lower spindle holds a single ply of this yarn, while the large spindle is what the plied yarn looks like.  Once the yarn was plied I wound it onto my niddy noddy to make a skein and to get a rough idea of how much yarn I have in the skein.

This is what that same yarn looks like all stretched out on the niddy noddy.  I estimated it to be about 260 yards of yarn which comes out to be around 800 feet of yarn in only one skein.

After I secured the ends of the yarn I threw the whole skein in a tub of cold water to help set the twist.  Once it is dry I will wrap it into a skein until I can use it for crocheting.  I am hoping to have enough to make a matching hat and scarf with this color pattern.

This is what the yarn looks like all rolled into a skein.  The colors really pop in this yarn and I like how they fade into each other.  I can't wait to see what the finished product looks like once I start crocheting!

My Variation on the Three Sisters

For the past several years I have tried growing the three staple crops of corn, squash and beans in a few different variations on the theme.  The first year I found some instructions online for planning out the crops together.  The layout was such that the hills of corn and bean alternated with the hills of squash in a checker pattern.  The corn on the outside of the plantings did great and the beans grew well, but were difficult to harvest, while the squash withered away from lack of sun shortly after the corn and beans grew tall enough to shade them out.  That year I wasn't sure if it was my irrigation set up that doomed the plantings, or my timing of the plantings.

The next time I tried it, I did a block of corn edged on one side with pole beans, with the squash growing in it's own row in front of the beans.  That year the beans were a little easier to harvest, but I planted them at the same time as the corn and they quickly overtook the corn before it was tall enough or strong enough to support the weight.  By the end of the season the beans and corn were laying on the ground in a tangled mat.  The squash did ok, but again may have gotten too much shade and didn't take long to succumb to powdery mildew in the damp environment.

This year is yet another variation on the three sisters theme.  This time I planted the corn as early as I could for the row that was to be shared with the pole beans.  Every few feet down the row I planted a small block of corn.  They came up slowly in late April and survived a few light frosts.  Once most of the corn seedlings were about six inches tall I planted the pole beans every few inches around the outside of the corn.  My hope is that this year the corn has a chance to get nice and sturdy and tall before the beans really start to climb them and get heavy.  I'm hoping that planting the corn in this small block will help them to support each other as the bean plants wind between them.

The other row of corn was planted in longer blocks with a three foot spacing between them.  This row was planted around Mother's Day and didn't take nearly as long to come up as the first planting of corn.  Once this row of corn spouted I planted the squash in the gaps between the blocks of corn.  I hope that by planting them while the corn is still small gives them enough time to get established so they can start spreading out from the front of the row.  Happy squash plants can get enormous and one of the varieties I am trying this year claims to need at least five feet between plants.  Once they get going they should make an excellent ground cover with their big, fan like leaves.

I have been having a hard time keeping up with the weeding in these long rows.  I have mostly been focusing on the main areas where the crops are growing, but now the walking paths are becoming a problem.  The weeds there seem to be quite happy from the plentiful watering they share with my irrigated rows.  I hope I can keep them at bay long enough for my crops to outgrow them.  Once the corn is taller than the weeds, things should get easier.

The Meat Chickens Are Growing Fast!

It has been about one month since the meat chicks arrived in the mail.  They only lasted in the indoor brooder for about two and a half weeks before things were starting to get too crowded for them in there.  I finished attaching all the chicken wire to the large run about a week before they were ready to go outside.  The nights were still in the forties a couple weeks ago, so I made a makeshift brooder box in their run that they will use until they are big enough to not need to be kept warm at night.  Hopefully they will be done needing the heat lamp at night in just a couple more weeks.

They spend their days chasing each other around their brooder box, exploring their little world.  Many of them have figured out how to get up to the perches and will take naps throughout the day when they are full and sleepy.  I have heard that traditional meat chickens like cornish crosses are very inactive and dull, even when give the chance to run around.  I am glad that these are just heavy bodied egg breeds because they seem to enjoy a much more active and exciting life.  I know that they won't be as big as the chickens from the store, but I know they will taste so much better because I know what they ate and what types of lives they had.  Apparently happiness tastes better!

Busy Season is Here!

The temperatures in these parts have jumped in the past couple of weeks and things in the garden are starting to get busy!  The weeding has become a constant chore and takes up most of my days off.  Thankfully I finished installing my drip irrigation, so watering the garden takes minimal effort.  All I have to do is turn on the water and remember to turn it off an hour later.  I have also mulched in most of the garden with rotten hay and straw, so that is really helping to reduce the watering I need to do.  I still want to mulch in the long rows at some point, but the corn and sunflowers might grow fast enough to shade out the weeds themselves now that the temps are in the 80's and 90's.

The potatoes have really taken off too.  I have already mulched one bed twice since the plants were getting so tall.  They are becoming so lush that I can hardly wait to start harvesting them.

The garlic is starting to get ready for harvest.  Many of the plants have one or two brown lower leaves.  When they get to the point where they have five or six brown leaves, then they will be ready to pull and cure.  I imagine by the end of the month I will start pulling some of the smaller plants.

 The peas started blooming about a week ago and I was able to have my first small harvest just a couple of days ago.  The more you harvest peas, the more peas the plants will produce.  I hope I can stay on top of them and put up a decent amount for winter in the freezer.  These first small harvests are always the tastiest though, so I have enjoyed some in salads and stir fries.

I have been harvesting the largest leaves off my kale, spinach and lettuce and enjoying them with my dinners and lunches as salad greens.  Kale is a little on the bitter side raw, but I like wilting them in a little olive oil and sprinkling them with salt as a side dish of greens with my dinners lately.

Some of the broccoli has just started to grow their flower buds.  I will harvest the first large heads of broccoli, but leave the plants to grow more florets for a continuing harvest.  I planted two different varieties to see which one does better at producing florets and to see which one tolerates the hot summers better.  I want broccoli that doesn't bolt before forming a good sized head.

Some things in the garden are not growing so well however.  I have done a second planting on most of my squash and bean plants because most of them failed to come up.  I hope it was because I planted them too early and they were too cold to germinate and not because the seeds were too old.  I was trying to use up some of the oldest seeds I had this year, but perhaps I should have just gotten new ones.

My pepper and tomato seedlings are off to a slow start.  They were pretty badly damaged in a windy hail storm that blew through while I was at work a few weeks back.  I decided to plant them anyway since I had put that much effort into them already.  Most of them were on the small side, but I mulched everyone in really well and gave them a good drink.  I hope they don't stay in a shocked state for too long.  Some of the peppers started to show some signs of growth only a week or so after transplanting so they will probably be just fine.

Overall I am pretty pleased with the state of the garden this year.  I am trying to keep up on the weeding as best I can, but I think that once the harvests start coming in, weeding will probably fall by the wayside.  Maybe I will do a good enough job that the weeds will be mostly eliminated by then, but I doubt it.  The first year of weeding a garden is always the worst because of the amount of weed seeds that are present in my neglected soil.  This year is the year to break that cycle for my soil by getting rid of the plants before they go to seed and mulching everything heavily so the remaining seeds can't germinate.  Next year I am going to try some no till practices in my garden, so that should further reduce my weed pressures in the garden beds.  I want to do everything I can to make less work for my future self in this garden.

The chickens have been quite entertaining for me to watch as I work out in the garden.  I throw them most of the weeds that I pull so they have something to scratch and peck at in their little enclosure.  I have been moving the egg chickens once a week and every time I move them I seed the space they just occupied with plants that the chickens can graze on next time they get moved there.  They do a great job of removing the weeds from the lawn and fertilizing and loosening the top layer of soil.  I am hoping they turn the yard into a lush little chicken pasture by the end of this summer.