I guess it is hard to know whether it is the beginning of the year or the end. We are starting to plant garlic for next year and we had our last market yesterday. The market is a little bit later than usual, in fact last year this time we were in England doing the Hadrians wall hike. The garlic is a little bit early … we usually plant around the average first frost time, and I do not expect a frost for at least 2 weeks.(I find that the average first frost should be set back a few week from the first of October until the middle) We are leaving in a few weeks for Portugal to do another of the various Camino’s.

This year we saved a lot of bulbils, not necessarily intentionally ….Most of our garlic is hardneck garlic and hardneck garlic sends up a scape in late May, June that forms into an umbrel as shown above with hundreds of little bulbils. The little bulbils are actually clones of the garlic rather than seeds as there is no pollination that take place. We try to cut off most of the scapes when they are about 6 inches long, the one in this picture has already formed 2 loops.

If you leave these on the plant too long they form into the umbrels shown above. The reason to cut them off at about 6 inches or so, allows the plant to put more energy into growing the Garlic bulb, and we certainly found this to be true this year, as all of the plants that we allowed the umbrels to mature turned out to be smaller garlic than its neighbours .

I have decided to use these bulbils that we have SOOO many of this year… to expand our crop somewhat. Trying to have enough garlic to plant 5000, takes a lot of garlic to begin with, and it cuts into last years harvest substantially. I usually end up buying more garlic to plant in the fall to end up with the amount of garlic I want. To grow from bulbils takes a few years to get actual proper garlic.

The box in the middle shows the actual bulbils fresh off of the umbrels (at the bottom). The rounds shown in the other boxes are essentially the bulbils from last year. That is what they grow into. Then when you plant the rounds, you end up with a proper garlic head. This is a bit of an oversimplification as the bulbils do not all grow into a round, some just grow into very small garlic heads. (it also gives me something to keep me busy in June, sorting through the rounds, preparing them for planting)

This year we have opted to grow our entire upper garden bed in the bulbils and rounds. I find that some of the rounds grow into our largest garlic of the year. Last week we planted all of the bulbils. This week we are planting our regular garlic stock.

This is our main garden…

THIS is our upper field, essentially a 300 ft by 6 foot garden we built with wood chips compost and soil.

As far as the rest of the market gardening, I would say that everything but the garlic we sell at the farmers market are just the things we grow way to much of to eat ourselves. (and our rocks and toques I make). I have never been very good at knowing just how much to plant just for ourselves. Many of the things I grow are more experimental than anything.. just growing to see if I can. For instance, this year I finally successfully grew watermelon, huge in fact. … only to realize.. what the heck are we going to do with all these huge watermelons? Perhaps they might be a big item in our booth next year.

We find that Lavender grows like a weed here and have been taking the new baby plants and put them in the back garden and dig up a few before each market and then put them back in the garden if they do not sell.

In the past I have tended to grow tomato plants and sell the plants in the spring and then the tomatoes as they ripened. I have always ended up with a lot of tomato plants because….. well the packets had a lot of seeds… Then I started saving seeds. and well…. ended up with even more seeds. I have been trying to grow less tomatoes because I end up planting 100 plants each year and then selling as many as I can and then giving many away, but always ending up throwing some away. Last year I found out that tomato plants could be an item for the food bank and gave them many of them. This year with my plans to grow less, I ended up not growing nearly as many plants as usual, as it was a very cold spring and many of the ones I planted died and I had to replace.

They ask each year exactly WHAT I am going to sell at the market and to be honest, I am never sure, just whatever grows to a point that we have more than we need. I guess we are hodge podge market growers.

We have a freezer full of strawberries, raspberries and black berries and so started selling them at the market. We have found that they are a great item, and always selling in the first 15 minutes. They take hours the day before to pick, but this year I have decided that I love picking berries (except strawberries which I have to bend over to pick, hard on back)

We even ended up with a lot of apples this year, this being the 5th year we have been here on this property, so hard to believe. Of course we try to make them all into something and have lots of help to peel them. (and we have lots of help. :))

One of the crops we grow lots of but do NOT sell, are the dry beans. Since beans, tofu and nuts are our main form of protein we do go through a lot, and they taste so much better grown from scratch and then cooked in instant pot …than canned or the dried versions in the stores. SO few versions in the stores anyways. The yellow/white ones in this picture are Hutterite beans which we have found to be quite delicious. The black and white ones are calypso, and the black ones are a variety of “black” beans.

I guess one might ask, why bother? It is all a lot of work but I guess we make enough with our “farming” to pay for a trip in the fall, and so that is one reason. I guess the other reason is that we enjoy it, and what else will we be doing. It seems that you have to have a “thing” when you are retired and I guess this is it, for us, at least for this part of the year.

Stay tuned for travels in Portugal

Much love, Janet, Ken and Tucker