Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Goal #27. Grow garlic (1/2 Done)

Last night I planted my garlic cloves. I've read in several places online that garlic is traditionally planted on the shortest day of the year and harvested on the longest day of the year (Winter and Summer Solstices). Hopefully by June 21st I'll be eating homegrown garlic.

I took a bunch of cloves off some store bought garlic heads and planted them in a couple of planters I keep on the front porch. I also had some hard little cloves that were in the bottom of a bag of garlic heads that our "garlic guy" at my old job grew. I wasn't sure if these were viable seeds but I'll try it anyway. They probably won't do anything...

I might plant a few larger cloves out on the side of my house to see if they grow better in different soil.

Garlic is cheap at the store but I thought it'd be fun to eat something I grew.

Over the past couple of years I've planted tomatoes, cucumbers, and herbs. Every year the deer or rabbits eat my tomatoes. Right when they are about to start turning from green to yellow I'll go out and the whole bush will be completely bare of.

The cucumbers were ok. If I ever do those again I'll chose a different variety. The ones I planted were like pickling cucumbers. Someone gave me a recipe for pickles but I'd rather buy them. My mom never really taught me how to can stuff...

The herbs...well the herbs aren't really my friends either. I was trying to grow mint when I was on a Mojito kick but I couldn't ever get it to produce enough to harvest before the bugs ate it. I've had chives growing in a planter for 4 years. Whenever I think the winter cold has killed them they come back even bigger in the Spring. We hardly ever eat chives though. I killed a rosemary plant twice now and my parsley and basil never does right either.

My friend gave me a butter lettuce plant last year which was doing great until one day I went to water it and it was missing....There was a fat caterpillar in the planter that scarfed down the entire plant.

If I didn't have a sneaky/curious toddler and and sunny window sill in my kitchen I'd grow more indoors. I saw a book on Martha Stewart's show about growing ANYTHING indoors. Pineapple, passionfruit, dragonfruit, citrus, and on and on and on....

Fingers crossed on the garlic!

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