Cats, Cats, Cats

Sketches, drawings, playing around in my sketchbook, charcoal, pencil, watercolour, ink, whatever felt right and was within reach... having fun with Cats... Love these creatures

Garlic Harvesting and Planting 2019

The garlic has been hanging in the kitchen since August... at first it was lying on a large wire rack airing.. it took up a lot of space so it could not stay that way for long.

turned out great.. 106 nice large "Music" hardneck garlic bulbs

the roots on a couple of them had grown through the composted tea bags... so tea bags do eventually rot.

I eventually had to trim off the drying leaves as they kept making a mess on the floor. they look a lot better now all pruned up and hung in a beam over in the corner out of the way. 

and man o man are they flavourful!

A couple scapes were allowed to go to seed and produced these little seedlets.. so cute!

and one of the seedheads grew into mini clovettes

 last year I felt I waited too long as Oct. had been very rainy and cold so when I planted, the ground was wet and mucky... not fun... not taking any chances this year and planted them the first week of Oct...( yes this is late to post) so I prepped the garlic cloves, John tilled up a space and  added compost...

 then I popped in the garlic with a good sprinkle of bone meal, covered about 1 - 1 1/2" of soil and spread straw on top.. Very happy to have them in... such an easy crop...

A farmer up the road 10 minutes had straw for sale so we got a few bales. 

 nothing to do now but wait for next years harvest.... oh, planted 103 bulbs...

On another note, as the year progressed the leaves were brilliant, wish I had more pics of them... they stayed on the branches a long time this year... at last I thought so... till the Oct storms came through.

They are gone now till the spring... 

...so to hold the memories of the gorgeous summer, we will be adding garlic to as many things as we can think of. 

Cheerio and Be Happy!