Drying Garlic                                                                         Planting garlic

There are many types of soft neck and hard neck garlic and they also have different flavors. You can order garlic cloves from seed catalogs.  ( see the post “Ordering Seeds It’s A Joint Adventure,”) never use the garlic you get in grocery stores.  Just like every thing else garlic is rated for different climate zones.  Only order garlic cloves rated for zone 3-4.  It seem that the only garlic that is rated for zone 3-4  are the hard neck types.

Garlic can be planted anytime between late August and October.  After you harvest your garlic you can set some aside to plant.   It usually takes about a year for garlic to mature into large bulbs, so plant accordingly. Before planting you must separate the cloves from the bulbs. Break the paper between cloves with a knife if you have to and then separate the cloves from the bulb.  They should be planted about 4 inches apart. (see above picture) After  planting the cloves will start to grow, sending up green shoots almost immediately.  They will stay green all winter even under the snow but will stop growing when the ground freezes.

Next summer they will produce flower spikes called scapes,  you must remove them before they flower.  Go along the row and grab them by the stalk and tug, they will come right out.  Scapes can be used raw in salads or cooked with swiss chard for example.
As soon as the tops start to turn brown they should be dug up and processed for drying.  If you wait to long the bulbs will split and they will not keep as long.  We usually wash the bulbs, with stalks still attached, then we cut off the stalks with pruning shears to about 1 to 2 inches above the bulb.  Then they are set out to dry in our greenhouse or in some warm dry place, like a sunny porch.  They should dry for a week or two. (see above picture) After drying garlic should be stored in a cool dark place, I keep mine at the top of the stairs to my cellar.  I have a real cellar with a dirt floor.  Yours would probably keep well in a cool dark closet in your basement.  I hang the bulbs in orange bags.  I save the net bags oranges come in during the winter and use them to store garlic.  They will keep a long time but won’t last until next summer.

Having a flock of chickens and gardening go hand in hand.  The chickens not only eat a lot of garden and kitchen scraps and provide manure for the garden and they also lay eggs.  Chickens you raise yourself will provide you and your friends and neighbors with wholesome and delicious eggs.  Because they eat bugs, worms, grass and scraps from the garden and kitchen their egg yolks have a dark orange color and are higher in nutrients than eggs you get from the store and they taste different too.  Chickens also need to have water and  laying mash available at all times and need to be fed scratch grain and oyster shells daily.  I usually give them one grain scoop of scratch grain with some oyster shells added to it a day. The oyster shells help keep their egg shells strong. Most feed companies have organic chicken feed.

I have had a flock of chickens since 1968, they came with the farm.  I keep a small flock ranging from between 13 and 20 birds.  I prefer Rhode Island reds and Buff  Orphington breeds.  Rhode Island roosters are the very gentle and will not fly at you or attack you when you go into the chicken yard to collect eggs.  Buff Orphington’s are the best mothers although Rhode Island reds are very good mothers too.

When we first started keeping chickens we didn’t pay much attention to the breed of rooster.  We learned early on that some breeds are very aggressive and protective of their hens.  They can be very dangerous especially to children as they will fly at you with feet forward at your face and can cause serious injury.  We have had a number of roosters, until we discovered the qualities of the Rhode Island Red, that we had to take a good sized stick with us to fight off the rooster while collecting eggs.  One time my late husband hit the rooster so hard that he thought he killed it.  It laid there for a while than got up.  We dispatched that rooster soon after as he had become much too dangerous to have around.

You do not have to have a rooster with your hens for them to lay well.  You only need one if you want to raise your own chicks.  One rooster for up to thirty hens is enough, more that one and they will fight and disrupt egg laying. I raised my own chicks for many years.  To raise chicks you put five to nine eggs, it has to be an uneven number, one for her to put under her breast,  under a broody hen.  It take twenty eight day for chicks to start to hatch.  The last few years I have been buying chicks and putting them under broody hens to care for them.  You know when a hen gets broody, she wants to raise chicks, when she refuses to get off the nest.  A hen will sit on a nest for months some times.  The only way you can bred up a set, that’s when a hen gets broody, is to move her to another location.  A hen will not lay eggs when she is broody.

Broody hens will accept chicks that they did not hatch as long as they have been sitting on false eggs.  When the chicks arrive at the Post Office, see picture above, I put them in a cardboard box with a 25 watt light bulb for heat and some chick starter food and water until it gets dark.   Then I remove the false eggs and put the chicks under her. When she hears the chicks peeping she will start to make low clucking sounds to them.  You can raise chicks without a hen in an incubator but if you already have hens it’s much easier this way and they will be able to eat grass and bugs at an earlier age.

It’s good to keep a flock of hens going by starting your own eggs or buying chicks every year or so.  The life span of a chicken is about five years although I have had some the lived longer.  Hens that are three years old or older will not lay eggs every day.  The older they are the fewer eggs they will lay a week.  That’s why it’s a good idea to raise your on chicks at least once a year in order to keep the flock young.  You always have replacement hens and a new rooster when you need them.  Extra hens and roosters can be sold or if you are disposed, you can eat them.  For me it’s too much work to prepare them for cooking and because they are free range they tend to be quite tough.

Free range means not in a cage, they don’t have to be let loose all over the place.  I have my hens fenced in a very large yard.  I used to let them range free in the spring and fall, however, the first thing they would head for were my flower gardens.  After a few years of trying unsuccessfully to keep them from digging up my flowers, I penned them in.  Now everyone is happy.

In years gone by people planted their crops according to the cycle of the moon, sun and other visual signs. Here are a few of the signs they observed when planting.

Corn and Beans.

Plant corn and beans when elm leaves are the size of a squirrel’s ear, when oak leaves are the size of a mouse’s ear, when apple blossoms begin to fall, or when dogwoods are in full bloom.

Lettuce, spinach and cole crops.

Plant lettuce, spinach seeds in the garden and  broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, pac choi, Chinese cabbage etc. seedlings  in the garden, when the lilacs show their first leaves or when daffodils begin to bloom.  See also post,  “Of Cabbages and Kings”.

Tomatoes, early corn, peppers.

Plant tomatoes and peppers plants and early corn, when dogwoods are in peak bloom or when day lilies start to bloom.  See also post, “Tomatoes and Peppers”, on page 2.

Cucumbers and squash.

Plant cucumbers and squash seedlings when lilac flowers fade. See also post, “Squash Anyone?”.

Potatoes

Plant potatoes when the first dandelion blooms. See also post, “One potato, Two Potato”.

Beets and carrots.

Plant beets and carrots when dandelions are blooming.

Peas.

Plant peas when the forsythia blooms, when daffodils begin to bloom or on Good Friday.  See also post, “Peas Please”.

This information gleaned from “The Old Farmers Almanac” and the University of Wisconsin Extension.

Beware,  sudden prolonged warmer than usual weather may cause apples, other fruits and plants to soften early so that they will blossom and then get caught by a frost, which could cause the above signs to be off by a few weeks or more.   Such a hot spell forced my apples and blueberries to bloom too soon last year and they produced little if  any fruit.

A truism in zone 3-4 is never plant your tomatoes or other tender crops before  May 30th, no matter how warm it has been.  More that a few neighbors have not heeded this warning and have lost their tomatoes and tender plants and had to start over again.

We are all familiar with the bulbs that come up in the spring, like daffodils and crocus, that have to be planted in the fall in order to have blooms in the spring.  There are bulbs and other plants that can be planted in the spring that will bloom in the summer such as lilies, dahlias, Host, astilbe and many many other flowering plants.

Spring is the best time to plant fruit trees, shrubs, berry bushes, strawberries and landscape plants because you find out almost immediately whether or not they have survived or need to be replaced.

Here is a list of catalogs that sell spring planted bulbs, flowers, shrubs and trees.

Michigan Bulb Co. ,  McClure & Zimmerman,  High Country Gardens, Select Seeds,  K.Van Bourgondien & sons, inc. whole sale catalog,   Van Bourgondien,  Farmer Seed and Nursery,  Stark Bro’s.

Linda and I have been very busy these past few weeks harvesting and processing our garden bounty.  So far we have frozen numerous pints and quarts of peas, green and yellow string beans, broccoli, cauliflower, and water bath canned 7 quarts of tomatoes.  We harvested and dried our garlic and soon we will be pulling up our onions and drying them and storing both in our cool dark basements.

The peas finished producing in the middle of July.  The string beans have stopped producing enough to freeze, but we can still find enough to have with a meal or eat raw.  Broccoli has just about stopped producing and the cauliflower may have enough for one more round of freezing.  The tomatoes have been producing for a few weeks now.  Last week we had enough to can 14 quarts and after a look in the greenhouse this morning we have another batch to do this week.  So far we have 21 quarts of tomatoes.

The Stripped German tomatoes have been producing very large tomatoes.  Yesterday I harvested about 15 huge tomatoes, they have been producing steadily for weeks now but yesterday’s haul was the most at one time.  We are giving away and eating as many as we can because you cannot water bath can Stripped German tomatoes safely because they do not have a high enough acid content.  Linda and I have been stuffing ourselves with bacon and tomato sandwiches, our favorite way to eat them.  It really is a shame that you can’t keep tomatoes like apples so you can enjoy them over a longer period of time.

The new fiberglass roof on the greenhouse has made a big difference in the amount and size of peppers and tomatoes we have grown this year.  The old fiberglass roof had darkened due to the fiberglass fibers being exposed to the elements because of erosion of the protective layer and mold discoloring it.

Soon we will be freezing corn and digging up our potatoes for storage in the root cellar and the last crop to be harvested will be winter squash and pumpkins, which we store in our cool basements.

This year we have very few apples and blueberries, probably due to a very warm spell in April that started the trees and bushes blooming followed by a very cold spell.  Cool and rainy weather keep the bees from pollinating the them.  There might be a shortage of honey bees but I have noticed a big increase in the  number of bumble bees in my apple trees and blueberries this spring.

Impatiences need to be started in early March, right after the tomatoes and peppers. A sunny front or back porch or germination stand is a good place to start seeds that need an really early start.

This germination stand has two 25 watt bulbs for heat under the shelves and two florescent bulbs on the top of the shelf for light. Linda’s husband Tim built it for her when she started gardening. When we started gardening together, it was moved to my house because It is my job to start our seeds.

After the tomatoes and peppers are off the germination stand the Impatiences go on. It can take up to 3 weeks for impatiences to come up. They don’t like heat under them and need light to germinate. The seeds should be only very slightly covered with sifted potting soil or seed starting potting mix. Seed starting potting mix is a very light potting soil and is available from Miracle-grow. I keep them under fluorescent lights. The lights are turned off at night to simulate a normal day. I have had really good results using this method. The plants are then put on the front porch until the end of May. After the last frost the flats are put out on the old stone sink, where they will be planted, to grow and harden off for a few weeks.

I plant the same variety every year, Busy Lizzie, blue pearl. It’s a great cool color for the stone sink planter on the north side of the greenhouse which is also a south west direction by the back porch. When you come out of the house on a hot summer day the first thing you see are the lilac blue Impatience or the pink and white bleeding heart that grows beside the planter.

Since the jute string is hard to see, I have drawn a line underneath the string to make it easier to find.

I know that it’s a little late in the season to be talking about peas. It occured to me that maybe someone else might like to know about some of the pea culture ideas we have put into practice here in our garden. Since I’m a tall person and getting on in years I don’t like to bend down to do anything. That’s why I weed sitting on a step 2 garden scoot and sew peas onto a chicken wire fence.

Peas need to be planted as early in the spring as possible. We usually try to plant them on Good Friday. This year Good Friday was so early, March 21st, that the garden was still covered with snow so we had to wait until the ground thawed out to plant them. Peas like it cool and if it gets too hot for too long they will just turn yellow, stop producing and die.

There are three kinds of peas, snap or edible podded, snow or sugar peas and shelling. Snap or edible podded peas look like shelling peas when they are ripe, they are round and look full of peas. Snow peas are flat and should be picked then they are small to medium size and very flat. With both snow and sugar snap peas you eat the pod and all. Before cooking or eating raw it is a good idea to pull off the string, just grasp the stem end and pull down and it should come off easily. Shelling peas need to be removed from their pods before eating or processing. Shelling and snap or edible podded peas come in many varieties and are either short or tall. I prefer the tall variety because I don’t like to bend over to pick them, tall peas also don’t get dirty laying in the dirt.

We sew both the short and tall varieties of peas onto 48 inch high, 1 inch grid chicken wire fences when the peas begin to flower. We do this because when the pods mature the tendrils are not strong enough to hold the peas onto the fence because of the weight of the pods. We use a dowel with a rounded head and drill a hole large enough to thread jute twine through it. Jute twine last only one season which makes clean up easy next spring. I takes two people to sew the peas onto the fence, one on either side to pass the needle, the dowel, back and forth through the fence to secure the pea plants. The best and fastest way to do this is to sew one side then the other, skipping over some of the peas and picking them up on the next pass.

There are two kinds of squash, summer and winter. Of the summer squashes there are basically three types, yellow, patty pan and zucchini or green. There are many many kinds of winter squash. We grow carnival, butternut, sweet meat, red kuri, gourds, field and pie pumpkin. In zone 3-4 they need to be started in pots in early May. We plant 5 seeds to a pot and plant the contents of the pot as a hill in the garden. We start ours in the greenhouse, we put the pots in between the rows of cucumbers that we planted directly into the greenhouse soil in early May.

Then we plant them in the garden in black plastic in early June. The black plastic keeps the soil warm and moist, as the squash needs to mature fast in a short season climate. You cannot grow squash in the greenhouse because the leaves become moldy. Cucumbers become moldy after a while also, however, they produce fruit fast and so you will still get a good crop. Mold on the cucumbers has never been a problem.

You cannot grow watermelon, or cantaloupe in zone 3-4, even in the greenhouse, unless you live in a river valley or near a large lake, believe me we gave it a good try. Growing cantaloupe and watermelon in the greenhouse results in the leaves getting moldy .

Summer squashes are at their best when cooked small, about 4 inches long, the blossoms can also be fried with batter. Some people prefer to eat squash when it is very large. As long as you can put your fingernail through the skin you don’t have to peel them. Large squash have very hard skins. Squash does not freeze well except when included in a dish like Italian zucchini. To make it I like to use very large zucchini with soft skins along with onions and tomatoes from my garden. You can make large quantities to freeze and it’s a very nice side dish in the winter. I have a friend that likes to keep large zucchini with hard skins in her cellar during the winter and puts the pulp in soup.

Squash attracts squash bugs which can be easily controlled by spraying with “Pyola” a natural insecticide you can get from Gardens Alive. We also grow a very large variety of marigold, called “Gold Coin.” It grows to 36 inches and is tall enough to reach over the squash leaves. You can get it from Jung Seed Co. Marigold is a good plant to use as an insect deterrent although, bees don’t seem to be bothered by it. The pictures above shows the marigold inter-planted with the squash plants.

Linda brought in the last two buckets of potatoes, one for her one for me last week. We stored them in the root cellar last fall and have been enjoying them up to now. We planted our new crop last week in the garden. You can either buy potato sets or eyes from a catalog (see the post “Ordering Seeds It’s A Joint Adventure”) or get whole potatoes from a feed store or farm supply store.  I received a new catalog in the mail called  “The Maine Potato Lady,”  they feature many kinds of potatoes, garlic and other crops and items. We also sometimes use leftover potatoes that have sprouted. The problem with using sprouted potatoes is that they have been cross pollinated and you never know what you’ll get. You can plant red potatoes and get white when you dig them up.

If you buy sets or eyes from a catalog, they will be ready for planting and only need to be stored in a cool dark place until then. When you buy the whole potatoes you have to divide them into eyes before you can plant them. First store them in a cool dark place for a few weeks so that the eyes develop, so you can see where to make the divisions. On the day you plan to plant them, cut the potatoes into as many divisions, each with at least one eye, as you can, making sure you have enough of the potato flesh to feed the developing plant. Then set the cut up potatoes cut side up in the sun to cure, it should take about a hour. When cured, the surface will be dry to the touch and will look as if it had healed over.

We bought thirty lbs. of potatoes to plant this year, ten lbs. of red, ten lbs. of white and ten lbs. of Yukon Gold. An easy way to plant a lot of potatoes is to make a trench with a hoe and then lay the potatoes cut side down, eyes up, then cover with a hoe. You can also use a trowel and plant each one in a hole down the row.  Mulch them heavily.

The longer the potato plants stay green the larger the potatoes will be and you will also have more of them.  In late summer the potatoes will start to die back.  You can leave them in the soil for a few weeks after the die off but, they need to be dug up before the soil gets cold and wet.  Potatoes left in cold wet soil will rot faster and will have bands of brown coloring in them.

Try to dig them up on the morning of a sunny day.  Put tarps on the grass then put the potatoes on them.  Let the potatoes dry in the sun for a couple of hours, then store them in plastic buckets, wooden baskets or what ever you have and then store in a root cellar or in a dark, consistently cool cellar or basement.  The potatoes will not turn green when treated this way.

Over Memorial Day weekend Linda came over with her two daughters, Theresa and Elaine, and Elaine’s husband Dan, to plant tomatoes and peppers in the greenhouse. It was a perfect day to work in the greenhouse, it was cloudy and cool. You don’t want to have to work in the greenhouse for very long on a sunny day. Linda had planted cucumber seeds in the greenhouse the week before. The cucumbers are just emerging now and will soon climb up on the netting we hung from the greenhouse roof. As the cucumbers grow, we thread them in and out of the netting so that the plants can get a good grip on the netting and won’t fall down due to the weight of the cucumber growing on them. We also put down black plastic mulch to keep the weeds down, yes we have weeds in the greenhouse, and to keep the moisture in the soil. In order to get a jump on the season we started our summer and winter squash in pots a few weeks ago. we keep the pots between the cucumber rows until we can safely put them outside in the garden.

We have been planting the tomatoes in red plastic mulch for many years now. The red-colored mulch actually reflects infrared light wavelength upward into your plants, stimulation more rapid growth and development, according to the US Dept. of Agriculture, which developed the red mulch. You can buy Red Tomato Mulch form Gardener’s Supply Company, A.M.Leonard’s Gardeners Edge and Charley’s Greenhouse & Garden.

Slugs and pill bugs are the two pests we have to deal with in our greenhouse. I put down diatomaceous earth and escar-Go and I also try to capture a big fat toad to put in the greenhouse for the season. Toads really enjoy the greenhouse once it gets growing good.

We haven’t had a problem with white flies for many years now. White flies live in greenhouse environments and to get them you have to bring them in from another greenhouse, at least here in the frozen north. The best way to get rid of them with Catch-It-Traps, you can get from Charley’s Greenhouse & Garden.

We use drip irrigation to water everything growing in the greenhouse in order to saves time and water. I have found that watering twice a week, on Wednesday and Sunday evening, for one hour works well for us. See a past post, “The Greenhouse“.

Peppers in the greenhouse

Cucumbers in the greenghouse