Garlic and Onion Harvest

The Harvest begins in earnest this week - As we head through July I can see that Reyn is becoming eager to move the garden along.  Our garden is carefully divided into 4' X 8' sections with walkways in between.  Each year he prepares a master plan, plotting out where each vegetable will be planted while taking into consideration the previous year's plan in order to assure proper crop rotation, and to allow easily for successive planting. The month of July offers the opportunity to plant crops that will ripen in the Fall and Winter -- but before those can be planted, our earlier crops must come out.  This process has been somewhat delayed because of our cool weather and also our vacation.  I could tell that Reyn was anxious to yank plants out and prepare for the next planting.  This was the week. The peas came out first, and were replaced by bush bean seeds.  Next came the lettuce, followed by onions and garlic.

Onions - We always plant Walla Walla Sweet onions - they are probably the thing I use most often from the garden.  I pull and use at least two each day, starting in early spring when they are very young scallions.  Reyn always plants a lot, and I cook with them all summer.  This year we planted both onion sets and seeds.  As you can see from the photo, those planted from sets are now ready to be harvested. He pulled them up and let them lay out in the sun for a day to dry out.  We'll keep them in our cellar and try to use them up quickly, since these are not very good keepers, but are delicious to eat.

Lettuce - We continue to have good lettuce, but it's days are numbered.  The hot weather is causing it to bolt.  Last week I cut and delivered 68 heads to a local food bank.  We still have more than we can eat in the garden.  It's hard to believe that we grew that many lettuce plants.

Garlic -  The last of the garlic was harvested today.  It has been dug, shaken off, bundled, labeled, and hung in the garden shed to dry.  We counted 122 heads.  That should get us through the winter.  Last Fall we enjoyed ourselves at a garlic tasting party hosted by our local farm and garden store. They offered samples of many different varieties of garlic with bread and olive oil, along with samples of garlic mashed potatoes, garlic soup, and even garlic ice cream.  Needless to say, we came home with several, actually 6, bags of garlic to plant.  Reyn carefully labeled them and kept them separate when he planted.  He made a planting diagram and kept information about each type.  Our plan was to be able to identify which varieties we liked the best after they were harvested and used.

Today was the day we dug them, bundled and labeled them, and hung them to dry.  It turned out to be one of those "Who's on first" kind of days.  122 garlic plants x 6 varieties x 8 bundles x 7 labels, x 2 ideas about what's what = ???  Seems workable, but somehow it turned into a complete puzzle. The diagram was helpful only if you were in the garden facing the right direction.  It was easy to differentiate the garlic, but oh so easy to forget which type came out of ground in what order and which bundle should have which label.  In the end we managed, but we can only guess that those labeled Nookta Rose are true to the name.  But really, with 122 heads of lovely garlic, do we really care?