It was nice to spend a decent block of time in the garden… with the aim of getting all the garlic in the ground! (Yesterday)
The patch for the white garlic was a bit heavy with the cow-poo-straw so I dumped 4 bags of potting mix into it to lighten it up.
My usual high tech tool to mark out where the rows and cloves will go
I’ve learned to take specific photos like below as a lot of things about gardening I do automatically because I’ve been doing this a while. Via the gardening pages I run, I get questions on ‘which side up’
Questions are really helpful as they remind me what basic things people need to know.
The bigger gardening page I run with a friend has about 18,000 members! Gulp.
We actually decided to stop taking new members – maybe we’ll open up again in spring but for the two of us… its enough work! Lots of questions are answered by others now – which is great. Very helpful.
A big whack of time was being spent on sorting the 100 plus new member requests daily! Then every time there is an influx of new members, there is an influx of new posts… often going over the same information again and again (some people haven’t cottoned on to scrolling and searching within the page haha)
Its not a big deal and we still get people the answers… but it does make an effect on the time we spend there.
So… we are just letting it settle for a while so my friend and I have some breathing space! (My friend was actually toying with quitting it!)
Yes, we could put on more moderators, but we work well as a team with how the page is now
Its actually been fantastic seeing so many people wanting to grow their own food and its nice to help new gardeners and have so many other experienced gardeners in there to share their information too!
If you’ve ever been a moderator on a Facebook page you’ll know that it also takes a bit of diplomatic skill wrangling a diverse community!
We have our dramatic moments, but overall they are remarkably well behaved!
I digress…
Above! The purple garlic patch!
Elephant garlic! I was lucky enough to pick up some of this at Ruby’s place when I visited Margie the other week! Its monstrous!!
I had run out of regular garlic patches and I was loath to tie up a raised bed for 6 months
So – experimenting with the straw bales.
They were easy to plant into which was nice! (Photo shows spacing not the actual planted clove. Once they were in the bale you couldn’t see them!
And this lot was super keen – so popped them into another bale!
All in all… 243 cloves planted!
112 white
111 Purple
8 elephant in straw bale
12 purple garlic in straw bale!
Hope they are all happy! I certainly am!
Cheers!
Wow! An amazing amount and variety. I planted garlic here in Chicago in October and it’s up and growing but something is eating the stalks! Any ideas on how to stop that? Will it hurt the bulbs?
Hi! What a pain that something is eating your garlic stalks – are we talking slug like munching or being nipped off by maybe birds? I had the latter problem last season and had to net them for a while. I’ve never noticed pests getting into the garlic before – I didn’t think they liked the taste!! If its only a bit of nibbling and doesn’t destroy the whole stem I think your bulbs will be ok.
It’s just the tops nipped off so maybe birds. Glad to hear it won’t affect the bulb! I’ll keep you posted but mine won’t be ready until August.
As long as they don’t keep doing it – I ended up netting mine until the birds lost interest and the garlic was bigger and sturdier! Bit of a pest though… never had it happen before!!
Hope they do well!
I thought that since you are out there creating soap that this site might be a little bit helpful since we all need a little bit of help.
https://soapdelinews.com/2018/02/aloe-vera-soap-recipe.html?utm_source=Soap+Deli+News&utm_campaign=f21010dcbb-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_08_09_06_24_COPY_02&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_a98d3fc9f1-f21010dcbb-100464895
Thank-you! We picked up some aloe plants from Ruby’s and it want to get them established here in the garden – would be lovely to add aloe gel into soapmaking!!