Monday, 4 April 2022 1:14 PM 4/4/2022 Rain has been keeping me out of the garden. Yesterday I managed to cultivate the garden without stepping on the freshly-turned earth. Today is sunny, so far, so I hope to be able to plant multipliers after supper. Tuesday, 4 April 2022 8:01 AM 4/5/2022 Got the onions into the ground, but I was too cold to haul dirt from the compost heap to cover them. Weather Underground says that the rain will hold off until afternoon today. Some of the daffodils have begun to open. Wednesday, 5 April 2022 12:08 PM 4/5/2022 Raked leaves and other debris off the old heap onto the new one, then raked shovels of the old heap loose and put a thin layer over the multipliers. I finished up by raking and shovelling a little dirt into the path between the onions and the railroad ties. I haven't got a lot further to go to get the dirt level with the ties, but I don't think it will happen this summer. I took advantage of one muddy day to pull out most of the grass that invaded the triangle between the strawberry bed and the concrete walk, but when I pick at what's left today, it mostly breaks off. One one of my bike rides, I saw a raised flower bed made of four panels bolted together, so they are available *somewhere*. The panels I saw were too low, but one could stack them and use steel fence posts to keep them stacked. They were also solid, corrugated steel like guardrails, but the cracks between stacks would take care of that if I can't find any that are perforated. 12:24 PM 4/5/2022 -- still sunny out. Time for a nap. Thursday, 21 April 2022 6:41 PM 4/21/2022 Some of the multipliers are up. Wednesday, 27 April 2022 1:16 PM 4/27/2022 It has been stickypod season for several days. Tuesday, 26 April 2022 12:53 AM 4/27/2022 Dave says that he saw a nice fat asparagus spear two days ago. I hope the deer didn't get it. Friday, 29 April 2022 4:20 PM 4/29/2022 We are having asparagus for supper. There are lots more emerging. The multiplier onions are up. Saturday, 7 May 2022 12:56 AM 5/8/2022 I bought a basil plant and a parsley plant at Open Air, and set them in the raised herb bed. Bed needs weeding. I plan to let last year's parsely go to seed. I think there are some thin leaves coming up where I thought the chives in the space around the raised bed had winter killed. There are plenty of chives in one of the railroad ties around the garden. I cut a flower bud out of the rhubarb yesterday; I need to cut out at least one more, but it was getting dark when I noticed. The rhubarb looks vigorous, but very, very green. No pink lemonade off this plant! There was a petiole on the flower stem, and I cut it up and boiled it with the tea I made yesterday for today's bike ride. After I carried out garbage at nearly sunset, I dug up some onions that were out of line; I think I missed some undersized winter-onion bulbils at the north end of the row. I took only as many as I thought we would eat in the next few days. Monday, 9 May 2022 6:33 PM 5/9/2022 We've eaten all that patch, and I've started on another. I cut four more flower stems out of the rhubarb, and put the leaves under the bush, sometimes tucking them under live leaves that were already flat on the ground. I cut up the petioles of the leaves, and I'm boiling them for green lemonade. There*is* pink on the lower ends of petioles that come directly from the crown, and the stems of the youngest leaves are pink most of the way up. Still too wet to push the cultivator around, but I can probably cultivate tomorrow. I pulled some weeds. There are flowers on one of the Joe Rickets strawberries that are growing beside the raised strawberry bed. On Saturday, I bought a basil plant and a parsley plant at Open Air, and set them out in the raised herb bed -- the southern one beside the rubarb. The rue has recovered from the severe pruning I gave it a month or two ago. The oregano, thyme, marjoram, and parsley came through the winter. I need to put more dirt around the marjoram. Since the dirt has sunken in that bed (I think I put a lot of seaweed under the soil), I set the marjoram on the surface and piled dirt around it, and that dirt has weathered away. The dirt that came with it is still there. Tuesday, 10 May 2022 7:19 PM 5/10/2022 Much to my surprise, the apple mint in the sharp end of the triangle between the strawberry bed and the concrete walk is flourishing. Also, strawberries are starting to take hold on the north and east sides of the bed. I put a flag by the one on the corner so it wouldn't get mowed. The cottonwood trees have leaves, so I guess stickypod season is over. The old pods are still sticky, but no more are coming down. I entirely missed the second wave; perhaps it started before the flowerbud fall was over. The new herbs seem to be doing fine. I hauled some rotten leaves from the lake to the asparagus bed yesterday, but forgot to go back for more today. We're harvesting asparagus about as fast as we can eat it. North end of the bed isn't producing. I hedgeclipped the fringe of grass that the mower can't reach around the old grill I used to use as a burning-place. I gave away the bake kettle; I should get rid of the griddle. It wasn't quite dry enough to use the cultivator yesterday, and I forgot about it today. The winter onions are already starting to go to seed. Wednesday, 18 May 2022 11:45 AM 5/18/2022 Went to the lake for another wheelbarrow of rotten-leaf meal, and found that the leaves were too far from shore, and too scanty to be worth taking off my shoes even if it hadn't been cold. (Barefoot is medically contra-indicated for a few weeks, so the question didn't actually come up.) But with the aid of a hay fork, I managed to collect a wheelbarrow of what had washed up on shore -- not as pure as mulch collected directly from the lake, but usable. The asparagus is now deeply edged all around, which will be a big help in slowing the incursion of weeds even if I don't get any more mulch. Most of what is left on shore would need to be composted before putting on a garden; too much twigs and sand to use as mulch. A lot of weeding needs to be done. If Menard's still has packages of three horseradish roots the next time I go -- I doubted their viability when I saw them -- I will buy one and put them in the asparagus bed where the row of winter-onion bulbils were planted last late summer. The onions at the south end of the row are ready to eat, and those in the middle didn't come up. Friday, 20 May 2022 1:25 PM 5/20/2022 Pushed the cultivator around the garden. A lot of hand-pulling needs to be done. The scapes of the winter onions are still good to eat, but I'm mostly pulling onions that are out of line or crowded. Multipliers are doing well, but I should fertilize them. There's garlic all over the place. There are several small catnip plants in the raised strawberry bed. I have cut sprigs off the large plant in the herb bed twice and, knock wood, it hasn't attracted cats. There are blooms and berries on the strawberry plants in the triangle between the strawberry bed and the concrete walk. Tuesday, 24 May 2022 11:39 PM 5/24/2022 Fat green berries, some plants in bloom. Thursday, 26 May 2022 12:31 AM 5/26/2022 Strawberries doing well. To wet to cultivate, but I could pull a *lot* more weeds. Friday, 27 May 1:35 PM 5/27/2022 I pulled most of the weeds out of the multipliers, and some other weeds. Then I hauled two wheelbarrows of the neighbor's grass clippings to mulch the asparagus bed. The warm, slimy part of the pile is about six inches down. Friday, 3 June 2022 12:52 AM 6/3/2022 The asparagus is still producing. Wednesday, 8 June 2022 12:59 PM 6/8/2022 Those two strawberries weren't honestly ripe, but they were delicious. There's a white-and-pink one on another plant. I think we'll get one more sprout off the asparagus. Sunday, 12 June 2022 12:27 AM 6/13/2022 I picked multiplier scallions for the first time today. Thought I'd waited too long, but they are perfect. Tuesday, 14 June 2022 2:02 PM 6/14/2022 The winter-onion bulbils have a tough outer layer now, and the greens are tough. Thursday, 23 June 2022 10:53 AM 6/23/2022 The catnip in the raised herb bed is setting seed. Sunday, 26 June 2022 11:02 PM 6/26/2022 I forget when I picked (almost) all the garlic scapes, ground them up with the stick blender, and froze them in an ice-cube tray. I don't think it was yesterday that I popped the cubes out and put them into a sandwich bag. I should have used two ice-cube trays; the shards that I ate were very zingy, and ice cubes don't lend themselves to being broken into smaller pieces. Or perhaps I should have put the puree into a sandwich bag to start with, patting it out square like a hamburger, thin enough to score and break. Tuesday, 28 June 2022 4:45 PM 6/28/2022 I picked and peeled a half dozen winter-onion bulbils to put into the soup. We have been watering the garden. Wednesday, 29 June 2022 11:18 PM 6/29/2022 I pulled some multipliers and put the bulbs into a mess of mixed vegetables. Also turned the sprinkler on the garden. Thursday, 14 July 2022 I spent the morning cultivating the garden and planting the fattest winter-onion bulbils. I planted whole clusters, and chose only bulbils that were already big enough to eat, in the hope of getting some fall scallions. Two bulbils were already sprouted. I threw all the secondary growth along the south side of the house. Perhaps some will survive. There are lots and lots of bulbils doomed to be also thrown away. Friday, 15 July 2022 1:37 PM 7/15/2022 Picked thyme, margoram, oregano, and parsley to put into the pancake I'm having for lunch. Also put in multipliers, bulbils, and tiny garlic cloves that were already in the house. Monday, 18 July 2022 1:56 PM 7/18/2022 Must have been Friday that I pulled all the garlics, and Saturday or Sunday that I pinned them to the clothesline to bleach. I left the two that I missed when harvesting the scapes on the table so that the stalks wouldn't be pinched. I plan to photograph them together with a gelded garlic to show how much difference gelding makes. 8:17 PM 7/18/2022 Talking to Kathy reminded me that the multipliers were overdue to be dug up. I thought I'd left it a bit long, but the five-tine hoe turned up only one missed bulb, and that had a green leaf. I found a very tall garlic plant growing on the old compost heap. The bulb was bigger than many of the garlics that had been gelded. Shows what good soil will do for you. Then, when plowing up the row of weeds where the garlic had been, I noticed that I'd overlooked three growing among the giant garlics. I pulled them and pinned them up with the others. The stray garlic is lying on the picnic table with the two planted garlics that I missed gelding. And also all the multipliers. I must have at the multpliers with a soft brush tomorrow evening. Then I dug up the row between the two blooming giant-garlic plants, and found no sign of the bulbils I planted. But two bulbs are enough to plant for next year's crop, and I didn't want to pickle giant garlic this year -- we have way too much pickled giant garlic in the soda fridge. Wednesday, 20 July 2022 7:33 PM 7/20/2022 Today I brushed dirt off the multipliers and put them on a newspaper in the garage to finish curing. I also photographed the garlic (http: etc.), then took a soft dustpan brush to the dirt on them. I should have done it the other way around. I harvested a cluster of winter-onion bulbils today, choosing one that was fat enough to be worth peeling. Peeling is fairly easy: cut the bulbil in half, put a thumbnail on the edge of the hard shell, pop out the tender part. I ate most of them sprinkled on jambalaya. 2:55 AM 7/21/2022 And put the rest into yogurt-and-sour-cream dip at bedtime snack time. Sunday, 24 July 2022 10:20 PM 7/24/2022 Cut the garlic bulbs off the line and let them fall into a box. I cut the stems too long, but I can take care of that when I sort out cloves to plant. I plan to do that as soon as the garden is dry enough to till. I'd better pull the weeds off the old compost heap while the soil is still soggy. We had a good rain Friday night and Saturday morning. I've begun keeping a cluster of winter-onion bulbils in the fridge so that I don't have to go out into the rain to get them. Monday, 25 July 2022 2:41 PM 7/25/2022 An advantage of keeping winter onions in the fridge: I don't weep when peeling a large number of them. Not that I've peeled a large number lately. A fallen scape got in my way when I cultivated around the edges of the garden today, so I cut the cluster off, broke it up, threw the small bulbils along the south side of the house, put all but one of the big ones into the fridge, and had that and what remained of the previous cluster in my lunch. Two of the small bulbils had started to sprout, so I buried them in the sand, using a twig for a shovel. I also pulled enough of the weeds on the old compost heap that I can dig compost to fill the trench when I plant the garlic Real Soon Now. I plan to dig a deep trench and partly fill it before planting the garlic. Tuesday, 26 July 2022 4:32 PM 7/26/2022 Dug the trench, but wasn't halfway through filling it when my back said that that was enough for one session. I'd set a timer to call me in to start cooking at five, but left off at four-thirty. I'm paying for letting the heap grow up in weeds: the compost is full of roots. So instead of taking the round-nose shovel out to dig, I'm loosening the dirt with the hoe, sweeping it onto the square-nose shovel, and spreading it out in the wheelbarrow so I can pick out the larger pieces. I wasn't out for much more than half an hour, and I'm still 4:42 PM 7/26/2022 behind on drinking. Wednesday, 27 July 2022 12:25 PM 7/27/2022 After ten minutes of shovelling dirt into the wheelbarrow, my back said it was quitting time. I probably spent half an hour gathering weeds, arranging the dirt I dug up to make the trench, dumping dirt into the trench and arranging it, and putting away tools. The trench is more than half full, but it's supposed to rain this evening. Good to settle the dirt I've already put in. Thursday, 28 July 2022 3:37 PM 7/28/2022 The compost had indeed settled. I was surprised when another wheelbarrow filled the trench nearly level. But I probably had a lot more compost in the barrow than before; I've loosened up some of the compost, and cleared weeds out of the area that I'm digging. I should push the cultivator around, but I think some sitting-down work is in order. Saturday, 30 July 2022 12:03 AM 7/31/2022 Finished filling the trench with compost, potted two Kenilworth Ivys and a lavender plant in case I can go to the houseplant swap next Saturday. Bought a tarragon plant at Sherman & Lin's and planted it in the strawberry bed. Which is what attracted my attention to the keniworth ivy and the volunteer lavender. Monday, 1 August 2022 10:27 PM 8/1/2022 Sat on the porch and cleaned the garlics, packing the solid ones into a paper-maché basket that I bought bite-size tomatoes in, reserving those that were falling apart for planting. Not many of the bulbs cleaned up white, but the basket looks as though they were all clean. I used the roots of bulbs as brushes to remove the dirt and loose skins. I stuck cloves into the filled trench about the width of a fine, fat bulb apart, with the points showing. If we get a nice, misting rain, I'll add a thin layer of compost. Since I have more bulbs in the basket than I can eat before they spoil, and there were surprisingly-few bulbs left over from planting, I threw the left-overs onto the compost heap. One of the Kenilworth Ivy plants I potted isn't doing at all well. I should pot a replacement. Tuesday, 9 August 2022 6:57 PM 8/9/2022 Turned out that the houseplant swap was by appointment only. Didn't look like an exchange at all anyway; presumably "propagation swap" was the name of the lecture. Whatever, I went to the library's used-book store and forgot the lecture until it had been going on for fifteen minutes. Just as I was mourning that I'd come into possession of some fine fresh cucumbers and hadn't bought any small onions, I remembered that winter onions have bulbs in August, and they were superb for the pickles I made yesterday. Pity I didn't think to hold back the fat end of another cucumber so I could put in more onion. I harvested garlic-chive flower buds for the first time today. Didn't make much effort to maximize the length of scape. 8:23 PM 8/9/2022 Planted the lavender sprout in the lawn, near the burning bush. Used the sample step-in post that I bought at Stock & Field (I think, or maybe it was Big R at the time) to mark its location. Also a small survey flag. After putting the tools away, I pulled nine of the winter onions in the row that I want to empty. The bulbs were about half the size of those I picked from the main row for the pickles. Fundamental law of bulb washing: no matter how you arrange the hose, the nozzle points directly at your face -- and you have to exert enough force to twist the full length of a turgid hose to make it point in any other direction. I put a lot of bulbils south of the house, and brought about half a dozen of the larger ones in to add to the container in the root drawer of the refrigerator. 2:06 AM 8/12/2022 The bulbs are a quite convenient size to have handy in a sandwich bag in the fridge -- like mini-sweet peppers, no leftovers. I have already used five of the nine. Sunday, 14 August 2022 4:40 PM 8/14/2022 This afternoon I spent about forty minutes harvesting eighteen little winter-onion bulbs. This leaves one clump in the unwanted row. It will probably yield bigger bulbs than the ones I dug. Some of the bulbils were big enough to bring into the house. While digging the onions, I found two overlooked garlic bulbs. The sheath over the cloves had rotted off, so I brought the cloves in for immediate consumption. Wednesday, 23 August 2022 10:11 PM 8/24/2022 Finished cleaning out the unwanted row of onions this evening, and got an even dozen bulbs, one of which had sprouted and was served as a scallion. Also a handful of bulbils were large enough to mess with; the rest got dumped along the south side of the house. There are three clumps of scallions coming up, one beside the giant garlic, one in the space between the rows (that one will get eaten early), and one at the south end of the row. The clusters of bulbils that I planted a while back have come up and are going to be scallions in September or October. The sprouts end at a flag in the row, which I believe marks the place where I switched from planting single bulbils to planting whole heads. Bulb season will end soon (as will August), but I think I'll get some more bulbs by thinning the established row. Monday, 12 September 2022 The August bulbs sprouted promptly on the first of September. I think I harvested the last garlic-chive flower bud today. Tuesday, 11 October 2022 12:35 PM 10/11/2022 I pushed the cultivator around the garden -- not easy with all that neglect. I got most of the weeds growing between the garden and the compost heaps. This about doubled the size of the new heap, because the weeds are very fluffy. I pulled the loose stalks out of the winter onions, and broke off those that were in the way of the cultivator. I threw all of the bulbils onto the compost heap, except for a couple of clusters that had taken root, which I left to grow. Instead of digging up, dividing, and replanting the giant garlic, I decided to leave it where it is. I don't think I will pickle giant garlic next year, so I'll need little more than enough to save the clone. Then I went in for a yellow flag and the giant-garlic bulb I harvested a while back, and planted it south of the overlooked winter onion in the garlic/giant garlic row. There were a coupple of well-grown garlics at the south end of their section, but most have failed to come up. So I hoed up the bit at the south end of the row, where I harvested the young winter onions, and pushed whole bulbs of garlic into the soil, without separating them into cloves. I selected the smallest bulbs. There's a yard a half of unplanted row at the north end. That row, the asparagus, and rather a lot of winter onions are all that are going to winter over. I pulled and cut a lot of weeds out of the winter-onion row, but will wait until after tomorrow's rains to try to get most of them. Monday, 24 October 2022 9:22 AM 10/24/2022 dilly-dallied and now the ground is hard again. Wednesday, 9 November 2022 3:58 PM 11/9/2022 I decided, while preparing breakfast, to start the day by burying two past-due chicken wings so the neighborhood dogs wouldn't choke on the cooked bones. I would, of course, use compost to fill the hole, and while the wheelbarrow was out, it was way past time to put rich dirt around the tarragon plant in the strawberry bed. It took a while to rake leaves off the old compost heap onto the new one. The leaves and woody weeds that I had to cut off with the saw-edge on my pocket knife brought the new heap up level with the flue tile that stands on end in the heap for want of a better place to put it, and doubled the east-west width of the pile. The tile also puts a definite corner on the heap on the side next to the park. The first pile of dirt I put into the wheelbarrow was too weedy to put on the strawberry bed, so I raked leaves off a patch of garden and dug a hole for the wings. When I was leaving the house with the wings, Dave pointed out that buzzards don't have teeth, so I took them down to the beach and put them on a large rock at the edge of the water. I put the paper plate into the hole and dumped the weedy compost on it. Then I dug about a peck of less-weedy dirt and used the old rusty trowel (which has the widest blade) to distribute it around the tarrgon plant. By then, it was time for lunch. Tuesday 1 November 2022 12:45 PM 11/1/2022 I cleaned the multipliers, put them into a papier-mache box, put the box into the paper bag I use for a root cellar. The winter-onion row has filled up with leaves, and I've decided to just let the leaves compress the weeds. The weeds won't grow much before I clean leaves out of the garden next spring. Wednesday, 16 November 2022 12:45 PM 11/16/2022 A hard freeze was predicted yesterday, so I picked the excellent mustard greens in the strawberry bed. Those in the garden are protected by leaves, so I think they will hold for a while. Might get too cold to go out pawing through the leaves to find them, though.