Fly-By-The-Seat-of-Your-Pants Gardening

   We had three rain-free days in a row this week.  It actually felt strange - but good! - to see the sunshine.    I picked our first bunch of beans on the 12th (Romano bush on the left, Red Swan on the right).  We blanched them, as well as the peas picked so far, to freeze later that day.

   My poor garlic patch.  I'm not sure what to do with it.  Usually, the garlic is all harvested, labeled, and hung to dry at this point.  I pulled a "Red Russian" bulb to see what kind of shape it was in.  The bulb is perfect, but the skins are very thin (I could have guessed that from the lack of dry, brown leaves - they should be dry about halfway up the stem before harvesting).  It flakes off the bulb very easily, even just from being touched or removed from the soil.  I won't be able to store the bulbs for very long and I don't think I can successfully plant them without a few protective layers of skin on the cloves.

   The fragile skins peeled off the bulb on the left side when I removed it from the ground.

   While I am not thrilled about not being able to store or replant the 50 bulbs of Red Russian I planted, at least I can obtain this variety fairly easily.  A friend grows thousands of this variety and has some for sale.  (Clearly, she did not get the awful weather we did in town.  I've seen pictures on social media, and her garlic looks as great this year as it does any other!)

    I'm more invested in trying to salvage the varieties I obtained from Seeds of Diversity and started from bulbils 3 years ago.  Some of those are less common and are hard to obtain here.  Brown Tempest, Siberian, and Central Siberian are still small and will likely take 5 years to reach full size.  I think those will be alright, as the pots containing them are inside so the soil can dry down.  This morning, I pulled the Kiev bulbs (five) and three bulbs of Baba Franchuk's.  As expected, the skins are thin; most of the leaves on the garlic are still green.  I will hang them to dry and will hopefully be able to plant them in September/October.   

Kiev bulbs

   More rain and cool weather is in the forecast, so I took my chances pulling some of the garlic early to prevent more mould from developing on the stems and to prevent the bulbs themselves from starting to rot.  Even if it turns out that I can't store or replant them due to underdeveloped skins, I would still like to be able to eat them and share some with others.  No sense in risking a complete loss!
 

   I have one Kiev bulb, two Baba Franchuk’s, and one Red Russian with the scapes left on, hoping I’ll get some bulbils when all is said and done.  They are all still underdeveloped.

Kiev and Baba Franchuk's

A little bee on a Red Meteor zinnia, just because.