Plant Garlic

About three weeks ago we welcomed our son into the world. He was due around the time first frost was predicted for our area. In the days before his birth we got a small cold snap that crippled tomatoes in the garden. We picked all the basil the night before and made double batches of pesto. After his birth, and with the support of my parents and husband, I was able to spend a couple precious minutes in the garden planting garlic.

I love growing garlic. You plant it in the fall, right around first frost, giving it just enough time to grow roots but not so much time that it will put up a lot of growth that would be killed by the cold winter temperatures. Most of the fall chores for the garden involve pulling out spent plants and preparing beds for winter-- tucking garlic bulbs into the soil is a forward-looking exception. 

The early rooting helps keep the bulb from being heaved out of the ground by freezing. Then the garlic waits under several inches of mulch through the winter. In the spring it will be one of the earliest things to come poking through the soil, green and hopeful. You can clip and use the slender curling scapes the hardneck garlic puts out in early summer. Harvest the garlic late in the summer when the stalks and fronds have begun to yellow. Let the heads of garlic dry in a cool dark place. 

Team Worm

Upon arriving these young guys announced they were on "Team Worm."

We had great weather and a nice turnout for the Worm Bin workshop two weeks ago. I talked about the basics of home-scale worm bins and we worked to drill holes in bins and get people set up with ample starter worms and bedding. I passed out this PDF on worms and recommended Mary Appelhof's excellent book Worms Eat My Garbage. A nice benefit of giving away so many handfuls of worms for the starter bins is that our home bin is now light enough to move into the basement for the winter.

Anna and Alaina getting pumped for vermicompost. 

On the subject of moving the bins in for the winter: I'm planning to build a new wider, double-stacked model to contain the rich liquid that drains through the bin. Last year I propped the bins up on 2x4s on top of plastic garbage bags. While that set up probably mitigated the mess (slightly) it did little to stem the flow of the rich vermicompost liquid. This year I hope the bottom bin will not only prevent the same dark mess, but will yield a highly concentrated liquid I can add to plants in spring. We shall see.

In fact, there's a lot of room for (and not much risk involved in) experimentation in home vermicomposting. My efforts pale in comparison to those Bentley Christie, self described Compost Guy and energetic cheerleader for worms, vermicompost, and home experiments. If you're growing excited about these things, I recommend his website Red Worm Composting where he describes with great enthusiasm (and ample puns) various methods and techniques.

Onward, upward, and on into the coming winter. Next up in my Land Scouting: saving seeds before first frost and documenting the fruit trees in our neighborhood.

Seeds, Glorious Seeds

Hallelujah, it's cooled off a little. If August is the month when novice gardeners fall off the wagon and let things go to seed, wither, and generally get out of control, let September be our month to creep back, prune, remove, and restore. It's also a good time to save seeds.

Since most seeds need three things to grow (water, soil, sunlight/warmth) you'll want to store them in such a way as to avoid those conditions. That is somewhere dry, clean, and dark. Make sure your seeds are totally dry before you tuck them away in a drawer. Similarly, if you're going to store seeds in the freezer, be sure they're dry beforehand. Otherwise they might rot and lose viability. I like to dry goopy seeds like melon or tomato seeds on a sheet of newspaper on the porch. It's outside, but out of direct sunlight. Give the seeds a couple of stirs to separate them from the newsprint as they dry and pick of the dried bits of vegetable or fruit pulp before you store them.

Saving seeds is the first half of the chore. The second half is labeling them and storing them and knowing what you've got so you can use them next spring and summer. I like to label my seeds with the plant name, the year the seeds were harvested, and any other information like "From Gerry Moll" or "Did well in partial shade." Tracking provenance points towards the generations before us who "genetically modified" through careful selection year after year.

John shows "leather britches" to Urban Land Scouts in the Beardsley greenhouse.

As famed bean collector and garden master John Coykendall said when he visited Beardsley Farm last year, "[We are] going to be the future of seed saving...people like [us]. People with such interests." (Thanks to Kat for her notes.) Like so many things, the success of seed saving is not grand or sexy, but rather incremental and ordinary. A good metaphor to carry into fall.