Garlic and Onion Harvest 2015

The heavy rain we had this spring and early summer wasn't appreciated by all of my Alliums. Some of them did all right, but others had problems with rot. That's why I'm posting about them a bit late this year because some of them had some problems during curing.

All of my garlic and onions were planted on September 21, the Autumn Equinox, last year. I planted three varieties of perennial onions: French Red Shallots, Yellow Potato Onions, and I'itois Onions, five varieties of garlic: Red Toch, Lorz Italian, Inchelium Red, Nootka Rose, and S&H Silverskin, and two varieties of leeks: Elephant Garlic and multiplier leeks.

The Yellow Potato Onions, Inchelium Red Garlic, and Nootka Rose garlic were all new varieties I got from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange.

French Red Shallots

Harvested June 11

I got these French Red Shallots back in 2013, I think, and this the first year I got enough to eat as well as plant (and even give some away to family members). The first year I planted them, a lot of them rotted, but they must have adapted or something because now they are doing great.

They're just like little red onions, with a sweet mild flavor. They're small, about the size of golf balls, but I'm very happy with them, especially when I see the price of shallots at the grocery store.

Yellow Potato Onions

Harvested July 2

The shallots' cousins, the Yellow Potato Onions, didn't do nearly as well. Long after all the other Alliums were harvested and cured, the YPO's and Nootka Rose garlic still looked like they weren't ready. I finally gave up and harvested them anyway, and I found out that a lot of the Yellow Potato Onions had rotted. They are supposed to be easier to grow than shallots, so I emailed Southern Exposure Seed Exchange to ask them what they thought happened. They thought it was because of the wet weather, and said onions especially don't like that.

It's like we either have to little rain or too much! The onions in the picture are the ones that weren't rotted, so I'm going to try planting them again and seeing what happens.

I also grew I'itois onions again, but don't have a picture for them. These are the ones I got back in 2009 from Native Seeds/SEARCH. They did great, as usual.

Elephant Garlic

Harvested May 11

Even though the Elephant Garlic was one of the first Alliums I harvested, apparently I was still too late. As you can see from the picture, all but two of the bulbs fell apart into individual cloves as they cured. Next year I need to remember that Elephant garlic is ready very early, and I'll try digging them up as soon as they send up scapes. This year I cut the scapes and then left them in the ground a while longer, and I guess that was a bad move.

As usual, I got lots and lots of bulbils, as you can see in the picture, but so far I haven't had much luck with growing those. You're supposed to be able to plant them and they grow into larger solid bulbs, that you then plant again to grow into full sized bulbs with cloves. When I've planted them before they didn't come up at all. If I have room I'll try again this year.

The other type of leek I grew again were the multiplier leeks I got from my SCA a few years ago. As usual, they're doing great. They're almost doing too well and are becoming almost like weeds.

Inchelium Red

Harvested May 12

This was my best garlic this year. It's an artichoke variety that I'm trying out for the first time, and I'm happy. It's very similar in appearance to its fellow artichoke, Lorz Italian. I haven't done a taste comparison yet. I got several bulbs of a good size. Don't have much else to say except this one is a keeper.

Lorz Italian

Harvested May 27

I'm still happy with Lorz too. It didn't do quite as well as Inchelium Red this year, but I still got some good sized bulbs from it. It's also a keeper.

Not pictured is Red Toch, which I harvested on May 12. I only got a few undersized bulbs of that one. It's also an artichoke, but Lorz Italian and Inchelium Red are both doing so much better, I've decided to discontinue this variety.

Nootka Rose

Harvested July 2

This is the garlic that gave me the most problems. It's a silverskin that I tried out new this year, to see if it was better than S&H Silverskin. I finally gave up and harvested it in July along with the Yellow Potato onions even though it wasn't ready, and some of these turned out to be rotten too. I'm torn about whether to replant this one or not. There were a couple of bulbs that looked like they might have produced cloves, and the biggest bulbs of this one were bigger than what I got from S&H Silverskin, but it took so long before they were ready to harvest. I like to rotate sweet potatoes after my garlic, because usually my garlic is out by May or June, just in time to plant sweet potatoes, but this year I had to make my sweet potatoes wait for Nootka Rose.

S&H Silverskin

Harvested May 12

I've planted this other silverskin before, but it's never done very well. The bulbs are always very small. I wonder if maybe silverskins just aren't a good type of garlic for me. They're supposed to be the longest keeping garlics, which sounds good, but that doesn't help much when the bulbs are so tiny they're hardly worth peeling.

Summary:
Keepers - Lorz Italian garlic, Inchelium Red garlic, Elephant garlic, multiplier leek, I'itois onion, and French Red shallot
On Notice - S&H Silverskin and Nootka Rose garlic, Yellow Potato Onions - These will all get another chance, but if they don't do better next year, I'll probably discontinue them.
Discontinuing - Red Toch, due to being consistently outperformed by the other artichoke garlic varieties I have in my collection

Even with the failures, I still have plenty of Lorz Italian, Inchelium Red, and Elephant garlic to eat, plus a lot of French Red shallots.

The Gold Moon

Sorry this post is a couple of days late. The full moon was actually Sept. 30. I think traditionally this moon is called the Harvest Moon, the full moon closest to the Autumn Equinox. It's just not very gold out there right now, it's mostly very green. We got lots of rain in September, about 5 inches, so everything is looking very lush and green out there. The weather has cooled down so we're having highs in the low 80's and lows in the low 60's.

The garlic is starting to sprout, but so are a lot of rain lilies that are in the bed with them, so it's a little hard to tell what is what. I planted the garlic in the last bed on the end, which is very close to some oak trees, so I hope that wasn't a bad move. I think after I harvest the garlic next summer I'm going to abandon that bed. Hopefully by then I'll have the old shed taken down and that prime sunny area it's now taking up made into more garden space. (We plan on rebuilding a new shed in the shade.)

I also haven't gotten around to mulching the garlic yet. It's probably OK for now since we've gotten a lot of rain and it's not cold yet, but it's on my to-do list.

The Red Giant mustard is growing bigger, but it's still not very red. Does it need cold weather to get red? You can see some more rain lilies coming up there too. They're so pretty, I just don't have the heart to pull them out. They're hard to pull out anyway because of the bulb.

I've also planted some arugula, which you can see here with another wildflower, purple wood-sorrel  growing up among it. That's another "weed" I don't like to pull up. It gets pretty purple flowers on it and the leaves are edible. A whole bunch started coming up in the yard after the rain.

I also planted kale, chard, and dill plants which have also settled in nicely. Still left to plant are parsley, cilantro, and celery.

The beets are just starting to sprout as well. Don't see any carrot sprouts yet. This year I also planted leek and onion seeds directly in the ground instead of trying to transplant them like I've done before. No sprouts of them yet.

The fall tomatoes are doing OK but still pretty small. I don't know if they'll have time to set a crop of tomatoes before frost. Maybe fall tomatoes just aren't worth it.

The tomatoes that survived the summer aren't looking much better than the fall-planted ones. Still no fruit being set. Maybe in the future I should concentrate my efforts on getting a good tomato harvest in the spring and summer, and just accept that there will be no more fresh tomatoes after July or so.

The basil is doing great. I think I should plant basil earlier next year so I'll have some to harvest earlier in the year (like when I have tomatoes!), but no problem with getting a fall harvest of basil too. The only problem I'm having is pinching off the flowers on the varieties I'm not saving seed from this year fast enough to keep them from cross pollinating with the variety I am saving seed from this year.

Well, another problem is figuring out what to do with so much Cinnamon Basil. I've found a few recipes for it, but most of the time when I do a search for "cinnamon basil recipes", I get recipes that have both cinnamon and basil in them but not Cinnamon Basil.

The luffa gourds are another summer survivor that I'm not sure are going to do anything before frost. I wonder if they are in too much shade? They're on the extreme other end of the garden from the garlic. They have grown up into the Ashe juniper tree that shades them on that side, but even the part that's up there isn't setting any fruit.

The hot peppers are putting out a second crop, but disappointingly the bell peppers haven't. The plants look fine, but no peppers. I feel like I'm up to my eyeballs in hot peppers already, but it would be nice to have some more bells before frost.

The leeks I planted in spring are still there, and I still think that's weird. They still haven't bolted or made any bulbs. They've just sat there all through the summer. I was going to try either saving seeds or bulbs from them but they haven't made either. I think this week I'll try cooking with some and seeing if they're at least edible. I keep thinking they're probably tough or bad-tasting by now, but maybe not.

Lastly, the Austrian Winter Peas I planted as a cover crop in the bed I plan on planting potatoes in are growing nicely, with all the rain. The idea is for them to fix nitrogen in the bed before I plant nitrogen-loving potatoes in there in January or February.

Which reminds me, I still need to plant my edible peas and fava beans, but I've run out of room. This is why I'm a bit annoyed with my tomatoes, bell peppers, and luffa gourds right now. They're taking up valuable garden room, as it becomes increasingly doubtful I'm going to get anything more out of them this year. I wonder if I should go ahead and yank any of them up, or if I should wait until they freeze to death before I plant my peas. Except that might delay the pea harvest, and I'm really looking forward to some delicious, fresh homegrown peas. This winter I want to grow enough peas to freeze some for later.

The Topaz Moon

I tried to get a nice picture of the full moon shining through the clouds and the ash tree in the front, but I don't think my camera knows what to do with that kind of lighting, so it didn't turn out quite the same as it looked to my eyes.

The Phoenix Moon Grove's name for this month's full moon is the Topaz Moon, named after the state gemstone of Texas and November's birth stone. The traditional English name for this moon is the Hunter's Moon, and while the deer are getting their antlers now, I don't think hunting season in Texas comes until later in the winter. The TV weatherman called this moon the Beaver Moon, which is a name I hadn't heard before.

November is the month we usually get our first frost. So far this year we've come close a couple of times, with nights dipping down to 34 or so, but not quite freezing yet.

The weather has been cool, but it's also been dry. We've gotten a little rain, but not much, just drizzles that don't even fill the rain barrels. I'm still having to water regularly. In this picture you can see the peppers wilting again. If I keep them watered, I've been getting a crop of bell peppers and, to my surprise, jalapenos. One of the plants turned out to be a jalapeno that got mixed in there, and not a California Wonder. Because of that, I went ahead and tossed the seeds I had saved since they're likely to be crossed with the jalapeno. Oh well, I can get bell pepper seeds somewhere else.

The peppers and basil are the only plants I nursed through the summer that I got any kind of crop from. It really turned out to be a waste of water trying to keep everything else alive. Something to remember for next summer.

I planted two kinds of peas this winter, Lincoln Shell and Tall Telephone. I got the Lincoln Shell peas in a trade (unasked for), so I went ahead and planted them alongside my Tall Telephones, but I doubt they'll beat TT in a side to side comparison. The description for LS says they're a dwarf variety, and one of my favorite things about Tall Telephone is how big they are.

I planted the peas on the tomato cages Daniel made for me for the last batch of tomatoes, and then alongside the rows of peas I planted root crops: carrots, radishes, turnips, rutabagas, beets, and parsnips. They're all growing well so far except for the parsnips, which doesn't really surprise me. I only had a few parsnip seeds from a trade, and they were a little on the old side. Parsnip seeds don't have a long shelf life, but I went ahead and planted them and so far two have come up.

The brassicas I started in August are looking really good. I planted multiplier onions in the slots where some of them didn't make it, but the rest of them have taken off. The mixture of the different leaf types in the bed looks very pretty, the blue-green smooth collard leaves, the yellow-green curly mustard leaves, and the bright green long thin leaves of the onions.

The Broadleaf Czech garlic is sprouting, which I guess means they have been getting enough water with their weekly sprinklings, but the other kinds haven't shown up yet. I know softnecks tend to sprout before hardnecks, so I'm not worried yet. The other ones should be coming along soon.

I planted some extra Tall Telephone peas along the back fence, even though that puts them in danger of getting eaten by deer. For something different, I tried mulching them with shredded office paper instead of straw. Daniel usually throws away his shredded documents, but I asked him to save them for me instead to use as mulch. It looks kind of weird because it's so bright white out there, but so far it seems to be working.

I planted a second batch of brassicas in another flat, because I still have room in the garden for more. I don't think I can have too many greens! The first batch is almost big enough for me to start harvesting.

I also planted a lot of lettuce, which is almost ready to start planting out in the garden. I got about ten different kids of lettuces in a seed trade, and since lettuce seed doesn't last long, and lettuce doesn't cross-pollinate much, I went ahead and planted all of them to see which kinds I like the best for seed saving. I've got quite a variety of colors and leaf types. I'm going to have to learn to like salads better, I guess!

Finally, I leave you with a picture of a new bird I haven't seen at my house before, a Lesser Goldfinch. They're a very pretty bird, with jet-black on the back and a neon yellow belly. As usual with these bird pictures, the picture does not do him justice. He was trying to drink out of the birdbath, and having a little trouble because he's such a small bird, he had trouble reaching the water level. I've seen him again a couple more times, always at the birdbath. I haven't seen him eating the suet or the sunflower seeds, so I wonder if he doesn't like those. Female goldfinches are a lot duller in color, so I haven't seen any, but that doesn't mean they aren't there.

I've also seen some White-crowned Sparrows eating sunflower seeds underneath the feeder, but I couldn't get a good picture of them at all. Winter is kind of an exciting time for birding here, because there are a lot of birds that spend the winter here, so this is the only time I get to see them.

Full Eagle Moon

Well, the blog has come full circle. With it being February 2011 I've had it for a year. I'm going to try a new thing with my full moon updates. I had mentioned before that I wished there were full moon names that better corresponded to Texas. The only ones I'd seen around were English or Algonquian. Well, a friend of mine has passed on to me a full moon naming scheme invented by the high priestess of his former coven. He only asks that I give credit where credit is due if I distribute the names to the public, so the names I'll be using for the next year all come from Phoenix Moon Grove.

The moons are named according to Zodiac signs rather than the calendar months, and are all named after something Texas-related. Last night's full moon was in Leo, and the sun is in Aquarius, so this year the full moon of February was the Eagle Moon. This name was chosen because this is the time of year that Bald Eagles migrate through Texas.

Personally, this is one of the few names on this list that I don't like that much. Bald eagles are cool, but I've never actually seen one, and I've lived in Texas all my life. I only recently found out that they're even found in Texas at all. From what I've heard, they're mostly found around large lakes and along the coast, which makes sense since they're a fishing eagle. There are even eagle tours you can go on to see them.

I think moons should be named after something more obvious than a rare, seldom-seen bird. If we're going to name this moon after a bird, I would have named it the Mockingbird Moon. I think there should be a moon named after our state bird, and mockingbirds are ubiquitous. You don't have to travel to a lake to find them. There's probably a pair nesting in your yard right now. This is also the time of year they start singing, which for me heralds the beginning of spring. It also goes well with next month's moon, the Bluebonnet Moon, which is our state flower and indicates that spring is here for sure.

Well, whether February's full moon makes you think of mockingbirds or eagles, it certainly feels like spring now after that hard freeze at the beginning of the month. We've had drizzle and light rain for the last few days, and I've had a chance to assess the damage done by that freeze and have been planning out my spring planting.

We haven't had another freeze in a while, so I've had my nightshade seedlings out on the porch all the time. The tomatoes are doing great, but not the peppers, eggplants, and tomatillos. I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong with starting pepper and eggplant seeds, but they never seem to do that well. Even the Lemon Drop peppers, which seemed to be doing great before, are now shriveling up. I don't get it.

Sweetie the Potato now has some friends. It looks like growing new sweet potatoes from slips is better than cuttings after all. Most of my cuttings didn't make it, so I've been sprouting roots for slips. They grow much more vigorously than cuttings, probably because of the food reserves stored in the roots. In the top left of the picture is the original deformed Vardaman potato that sprouted in the kitchen, and then to the right of that is a Porto Rico, then on the bottom left is a Beuregard, and the bottom right is a White Yam. I have a few more sprouted White Yams and Porto Ricos I haven't potted up yet (ran out of potting soil). The one variety from last year that isn't represented is Nancy Hall. I have two Nancy Hall potatoes that have been sitting in cups of water for at least as long as the other varieties, and they still aren't sprouting. Don't know what the problem is.

Out in the garden, a lot of plants didn't make it through the hard freeze. The lettuce and endive were only slightly damaged.

The leeks, garlic, potato onions, and shallots also seem fine. The bulb onions are another story, but I'm not surprised. I've still never been able to grow those successfully. I'm wondering if I should just give up on having homegrown onions this year, or buy some onion starts from a nursery.

The fava beans and peas were badly damaged, and I was afraid they weren't going to make it, but it looks like at least some of them are re-sprouting. Good! Those were my only seeds, so I wanted to at least be able to save seed to make a big planting of them next fall, even though it now looks like I won't have enough to eat.

Everything else, the brassicas, beets, carrots, chard, etc., all ended up looking like this. Frozen to death. That green you see? Those are weeds. The weeds did fine.

But in the garden, there are always second chances and new beginnings. Looking at the planting guide for San Marcos, it looks like I have enough time to try for another quick crop of cool-weather vegetables, so I replanted a bunch of stuff. I just direct seeded everything this time. The turnips here are already coming up. They sprouted fast in this damp weather.

I've also been doing a little "remodeling", because gardeners never have enough space! After calculating that I actually had more path than bed in the garden, I'm merging some of my beds and expanding them out a little. I don't need that much path anyway, do I? So instead of 15 beds that are 4 by 8 feet each laid out in a 3 by 5 pattern, I'm going to have 5 beds that are 4 by 8 feet, and 5 that are 4 by 20 feet. Now maybe I'll at least have more bed than path.

Full Wolf Moon

I had trouble choosing the best name for this moon out of the traditional names of Ice Moon, Wolf Moon, or Old Moon. Sometimes we have ice in January, but not today. I went with Wolf Moon, since I like wolves, and it reminds me of how the tribe that used to live here, the Tonkawa, considered themselves to be descendants of wolves. Sadly, both the wolves and the Wolf People are no longer here. The Tonkawa were moved to a reservation in Oklahoma, and wolves are being reintroduced to Arizona and New Mexico, but there are no plans to bring any to Texas.

I moved my sweet potato cuttings from the garage to the windowsill where it's warmer, despite the risk of a kitty deciding it would be fun to knock them off. They didn't seem to be doing well in the chilly garage. I could also try growing slips from the roots I still have and see which method is easier.

This strange creature is "Sweetie", a sweet potato my weird fiancee dug out of the compost pile. I put it there with the other damaged, deformed, or really small roots when I harvested my sweet potatoes. Daniel thought it was cute and looked like some kind of curled-up creature, complete with nose and tail. He drew a face on it to complete the picture and had it living in the kitchen. Well, it turned out to like the warm kitchen, and started growing sprouts around the "nose". I decided I might as well keep it to grow slips from. I'm not sure which variety it is, but since it's orange it's either Porto Rico or Vardaman, and the sprouts are purple so far, so it's probably Vardaman. It will become more clear as the leaves grow, since those two varieties have very different looking leaves.

I potted up Sweetie and put him by a window with some houseplants for company. This will be a good way to compare growing sweet potatoes from slips or from cuttings. I'm not too worried about using a deformed potato to propagate my next crop from. I initially discarded the small or misshapen or damaged ones just because I didn't feel like bothering with eating them. Since sweet potatoes are propagated vegetatively, all plants from a certain variety should be clones of each other. Therefore, any differences between them would be due to environment and not genetics. This particular potato probably got curled up because it grew against a rock or something, not because anything is inherently wrong with it.

This is also why, when growing regular potatoes, you can eat the biggest ones and save the smallest ones to replant. Theoretically, the small ones and big ones of the same variety should all be genetically identical.

I've started moving some of my nightshades into individual pots, after starting them out in communal pots. I do this around when they start getting their first set of true leaves. By then it should be clear which ones are going to make it and are worth giving extra room. I have them out on the back porch right now to get some natural light. Last week was cold and rainy, but it's supposed to be sunny and warmer for a while, so I'll leave them out there until the next time it freezes.

Last moon, the jalapenos were still hanging on, but now it looks like they're done for. A few more hard freezes saw to that. I'm going to go ahead and pull them out and till up that bed some time this week.

The lettuce and endive is filling out nicely and is almost big enough to start picking for some winter salads. It's too hot in the summer to grow lettuce. It gets bitter and bolts, so lettuce salads are winter thing if you're eating seasonally.

The other greens like collards and chard are growing slowly due to the cold. I really should have planted them earlier so I'd have something from the garden to eat right now.

The shell peas are disappointing. They don't look so good, and have only set a couple of pods so far. The vines seem weak and stunted. Even though I got this packet of pea seeds for free, it's turning out to really not be worth it. I'm sticking with Tall Telephone from now on. That's a nice, robust variety that gave me a good crop last year. That's the shell pea that I'll compare all other shell peas to.

The Dwarf Grey Sugar peas look better, though they haven't started to flower or produce pods yet. At least the vines are looking healthy, so once they do set a crop, it should be a good one. This is the only snow pea I've ever grown, but it's always done well, giving me a good crop by spring.

The beets and carrots are also growing slowly in the cold weather. Carrot seedlings are so tiny!

The turnips are a little farther along, and have sped up their growth since we got some good rain and then some sun. The rutabagas really aren't doing well at all, though. Looks like I'll only end up with a few this year.

Looks like I won't have very many onions either. I still haven't gotten the hang of growing onions. I certainly won't have enough to save seed, since onions can have some inbreeding depression. It's hard to find seed for short-day open-pollinated onions, too.

The superstars of the garden right now are the fava beans. They're just growing away, no sign of any pests or problems of any kind. I think I'll mostly let this batch go to seed, maybe eating a few just to see how they taste, but I want to grow a whole lot more fava beans next winter. Not only are they growing like crazy when not much else is happening in the garden, but they fix nitrogen too.

Finally, in the garage my cushaw squash are turning yellow. I think that means they're ripening further in storage. I've still only managed to eat three of them, so I'm considering trying to unload some on my friends and family. I put the nicest, biggest ones on top of the garage refrigerator. Those are the ones I'm going to save seed from, so I'm keeping those.

They're also getting sweeter in storage. I really wonder why cushaw squash seem to have such a bad reputation. For example, the Seed Savers Exchange public catalog only carries one variety, Tennessee Sweet Potato, and it says it has poor eating quality and is best used for decorations. Sandhill Preservation Center has a similar opinion. Even though they carry more varieties, they say they are best used as livestock feed.

The ones I've grown do have a very stringy texture, especially compared to butternut or acorn squash. This might be off-putting if your recipe calls for cubes of squash, but the stringiness doesn't matter if the squash is pureed, like for baked goods. Aside from the texture thing, the last squash I cut open, roasted and pureed was quite sweet in flavor, and had a rich orange color to the flesh. Not at all pale and bland like I've seen cushaws described.

I wonder if it's a climate thing. Weirdly enough, most seed companies are based up north. Maybe a cushaw grown in the Midwest or Northeast doesn't have enough heat or a long enough growing season to develop to its full potential. This is probably a good example of why you should keep climate in mind when reading other people's opinions on plant varieties.

Anyway, I'm sold on cushaws now and plan on trying some more varieties in the future. Maybe there are some out there that are less stringy, which is really my only complaint (if I leave out the complaint that they're too productive, which isn't really something worth complaining about).