September Song

This blog is intended for my own purposes - to chart my progress in the garden and help me remember what I'm doing.  I decided to start it in the fall as this is the time for planting garlic - that wonderful, easy and so worthwhile crop!  Most of our gardening is done in concrete raised beds with solid bottoms which drain.  This is because of the cedar trees which insinuate their roots everywhere!  I like my hard work to go to vegetables, not trees.

The Garlic Bed

This year the garlic will grow in a bed that previously was home for quinoa - this year's experiment.  Before that, corn and beans took pride of place, so this would be a good year to grow garlic.  The bed was readied by turning over, incorporating 2 wheelbarrows of compost - complete with red wiggler worms and more turning over and watering.  Finally a good dose of my homemade fertilizer, courtesy of Steve Solomon, was sprinkled over the bed, lightly turned over and raked in.

Garlic Cloves Ready for Planting

Now it was ready for the garlic.  I am growing 2 varieties which I originally bought from Salt Spring Seeds and have now forgotten the name.  Could be Mountain, could be Northern Quebec.  I do know they are lovely big cloves.  One is tall (30 cloves planted) and the other shorter (20 cloves planted).  The whole bed was finished off with a mulch of finely shredded maple leaves and watered in well.  Now I wait until late winter to see the first green shoots breaking their way through.

This year I have also planted some fall crops.  With advice from a fellow gardener, I planted carrot seeds in 6" pots - 9 to a pot) and once spouted, put the whole pot in the ground.  It works extremely well!  Much better success with carrots this year than in previous years.  Beside the last planting of carrots I put in a short row of Fordhook Swiss Chard.  It's a lovely big chard with tasty ribs which is slow to bolt.

Fordhook Swiss Chard and Scarlet Nantes Carrots

Finally, I planted snow peas on a zig-zag fence which is anchored by bamboo canes.  I'm hoping this will be more successful than on woven canes which I set up for my last planting of this variety - Oregon Giant.  Was the name perhaps a give-away that the printed information of 4' tall was perhaps incorrect?  Anyway - gardening is always an experiment, isn't it?

Oregon Giant Snow Peas Almost Ready to Flower

And I finish off with a shot of some of the Copra Onions which have been harvested and are drying in the potting shed.  This year I also grew a sweet onion variety called Candy which is supposed to store well.

Copra Onions Drying in the Potting Shed

Oh, and about the quinoa!  It's one of those wonderful ancient grains and this year I decided to try it.  The plants grew well, topping off over 6' which seems to me quite tall for being grown in what is essentially a container.  Once the seeds started to separate from the frothy yellow, orange and red tops, I cut them and am drying them on trays in the potting shed.  The fun will come when I try to separate the seeds from the chaff - or whatever you call non-seed material on quinoa.  But that's a subject for another day.