Phew. Let me tell ya, it has been a bit of a marathon around here! Since our weather has been a bit all over the place, I had to get ALL of the warm weather crops in all at once. This of course meant some very, very long days over the past week.
I'm not sad about it though.
Part of the reason for my lack of sadness is the garlic. It is just so massive this year, and it's finally scaping!
What the heck are scapes some of you might be wondering? Well, I grow hardneck garlic, and hardneck garlic scapes before its growth cycle is done. A scape is a green onion looking stem that grows out and flowers at the end of the hardneck garlic's growth cycle, and to a garlic grower it's a super exciting time when they start to develop for a couple of reasons.
One, once the scape grows out into it's first curl, you cut it and know that you just helped plant divert energy go to bulb growth, and two, you get to EAT the scapes.
Oh how I love garlic scapes, they are so good whipped into a pesto, or pureed with some olive oil and frozen into cubes to chuck into your cooking. You can pickle scapes and do a ton of things with them, and as I have a LOT of garlic growing, I just know I will be scape rich this year!
And today, after transplanting my new thornless blackberry plants, I meandered over to check the garlic and saw that, Houston, we have scapes!
Of course, they are just starting to emerge and aren't near curling and cutting stage yet, but it's still exciting!
The new blackberry bushes are also exciting. A local nursery had them on sale this weekend, and I have been wanting to get friends for my inherited blackberry bush that lives out in the garden. Now I have four, two more Chester's and a Black Satin. The Black Satin even has little baby berries growing on it. Me, I just care about developing this year's primocanes so I get a little harvest next year, but holy surplus, there should be a right nice harvest the year following. You know, because of compost, proper irrigation, and other such plant care things.
Another chore that happened amongst putting in the rest of the garden was the Flowering. I let one of my dear friends plant a couple rows of flowers that are good for drying each year. She is a dried flower wreath making artist of awesomeness. Plus, it means I get to gaze upon several hundred row feet of FLOWERS! How could that ever be a bad thing?
So she, her husband, and I plunked over three hundred statice, Russian statice, Safflower, baby's breath, gomphrena, and dusty miller into the soil on Thursday. Even with the temps at about 80F the little plant babies are settling in right nicely. I think the drip irrigation the hubs installed has helped keep transplant
shock to a minimum.
I know this because the spaghetti squash, acorn squash, zucchini, and miscellaneous pumpkin plants that I transplanted are looking just dandy. Once again, I think the hub's irrigation skills have come in clutch in this area.
Over the last four days I have sown my corn and beans, and twenty thousand carrot seeds. Yes, I said thousand, but I got a smoking deal on a big bag of carrot seeds and I had a HUGE bed that just beckoned for some carrots. Plus, I will probably thin that bed down to a couple thousand carrots, it will be fine.
Maybe.
A lot more stuff happened, but as I spent eleven hours solid baking yesterday, I am going to leave that bit of info for a future post. My shoulder blades are on fire from all the planting and baking, and I think I am going to go out and sit a spell on the porch. For restorative reasons and such.