Ready for the summer to heat up a bit?  Then fasten your seat belts and put your tray tables in their upright position:  it’s garlic time.  From spicy hot to nutty mellow, big flavor sprouts from these little cloves. If you’re growing garlic for the first time, Now is the time for you to plan your harvest.

By Carol O’Meara

August 4, 2010

Hardneck garlic throws a curled, flowering stem called a “scape” that, if left on the plant, eventually turns woody.  Softneck garlic doesn’t normally do this.

Now, if you want big bulbs, those scapes have to be cut from the plant, snipped off before it makes a loop.  But don’t worry if you missed cutting them from the plant and it bloomed – from this flower small bulbils will form that grow into small bulbs in a couple of seasons.  If you’re interested in propagating your garlic from these bulbils, leave them in place until harvest time and then dry them separately from the bulbs.

Once garlic throws scapes and the tips begin browning back, stop watering it.  Let the leaves die down and harvest when the lower leaves are half to three-quarters brown.  Use a flat shovel or garden fork to loosen the ground near the bulbs and then lift the plants by hand.

Check the first bulbs you pull before harvesting the whole lot by gently brushing away the dirt to look for maturity. They should have reached a good size and be well wrapped in skin.  To help them dry quickly, hang them upside down to cure in a dry, warm, dark, airy place for a few weeks, then cut stalks one inch above the bulb for storage.

Early varieties should be ready in mid to late July, with mid and late season garlic ready through late August.

Garlic comes in dozens of delicious varieties, so shop your local farmer’s markets for new types to try.  Some are mellow and good keepers; others are spicy-hot and best used soon.  Make note of the types you liked, then get certified disease free cloves for planting in the fall from places such as Filaree Farm,  The Garlic Store, or Gourmet Garlic Gardens.

Shop now for best selection – these stores often sell out their garlic, which will be shipped to you in September for planting.  Because of the possibility of chemical storage treatments or disease, don’t plant garlic you buy at the grocer’s.

If you’re a rookie gardener, be aware that garlic varieties offer subtle to strong flavor.  Softneck varieties – those with soft center stalks – are tolerant of common mistakes and easy for beginners to grow.  The bulbs are larger than hardneck varieties and have more cloves. They store well, sometimes for up to 9 months.

Hardneck varieties have a center stalk that is stiffened and woody.  They have fewer cloves and are larger and easier to peel than softnecks.   Both types offer great flavor.  A word of caution on garlic, however.  Depending on the garlic, one bulb will provide many cloves for planting, and you’ll get plenty of garlic bulbs if you plant them all.  This is a lesson I learned due to my enthusiasm for trying nine varieties of garlic.  Silly me, I planted every clove from every bulb, and now I have enough garlic to feed a Tuscan village.

Eating all of it is out of the question, and now I’m assessing my friends and family to see if they will take some off of my hands.  Every vegetable gardener goes through this.  Each season brings a bounty of one crop or another, and people who are normally friends or acquaintances suddenly become targets for excess produce giveaways.

We have a wonderful organization here called Community Food Share, which takes excess produce from gardeners and gives it to those who need it.  Many food banks usually welcome most produce from local gardens provided that it is fresh, undamaged, and clean.  Take your extras to them and let others share in the bounty of the harvest.

By Carol O’Meara

June 7, 2010

Don’t groan. We know you’re bracing for the summer harvest, gathering your courage in advance of zucchini, tomatoes and green beans.  Though the thought of stretching this out for another round of growing seems like insanity, once you’ve tried the flavors of fall, you’ll be hooked on third-season gardening.

Sowing cool season crops begins mid- to end of July, to ensure you’ll be harvesting sweet rewards when days get crisp.  As daytime temperatures drop – and they will – most cool season vegetables begin maturing, and the trend towards chilly means those plants aren’t suffering hot flashes as they reach their peak.

Beets, carrots, kale, lettuce, broccoli, spinach, turnips, and peas can be direct sown through mid-August, but before you put the seeds in the ground, treat yourself to a little shopping.  The savvy gardener knows that the time for finding bargains is now, when many retailers have seeds on sale trying to clear out inventory.

When shopping, look for fast-maturing vegetables to bring a harvest in before truly cold weather arrives.  Grab packets of peas and try a few beets, or go for the spinach and turnips.  If we get that September snow squall, don’t worry. These vegetables will shrug that off, and continue to produce well into October or November when we finally get a killing frost.

Prepare your garden by removing all summer crop residues and weed growth in the area you want to plant, and turn the soil at least six to eight inches deep. Add one to two pounds of a general fertilizer per 100 square feet of area, and mix it into the soil.

If you don’t have room in the kitchen garden to add these fall plants in, consider ripping out the ornamental beds to make more room.  Those flowers are just showing off, and there’s time to build a new bed now and get the irrigation in.  Just use your vacation time to start another garden instead of going to a cooler locale.

Best results are achieved by sowing seeds of broccoli raab, bok choi or other cool season vegetables directly into the soil, but beware the hazards of a Colorado summer and keep the surface of the soil from drying and cracking with a light mulch of compost over the seed row.

Lettuce, peas and spinach need a bit of shade to reduce heat in the soil for germination, and if you can, plant them under taller summer crops that will be finished with the first frost.  Plant the seeds slightly deeper than in spring to take advantage of cooler, moister soil.  Consider popping in a few annual herbs, like basil, for a late season burst of flavor to go with those savory vegetables.

Brassicas, such as broccoli, will turn bitter if water stressed and don’t recover once this has happened, so don’t allow seedlings and young plants to dry out.  Because cabbage loopers may be around, have a supply of Bacillius thuringiensis (Bt) nearby to help control them on the young plants.

Once you’ve started bringing in the harvest, plan on freezing some to preserve it for winter meals.  You’ll be glad you went to the effort of growing a second season of food for the family, and won’t miss those ornamental beds after all.

By Carol O’Meara

June 7, 2010

Call me old fashioned, but I think that if I don’t water my houseplants, they should do what they’ve always done: curl up and die.  But recently I’ve fallen from the path of purity, and caved into a gardening fad, one that I’ve been laughing at since it first appeared in the Sunday newspaper magazines and advertising cards that litter my mailbox.  In this moment of weakness, I turned my gardening upside down.
Literally.  By planting a tomato into one of those hanging bags, I took my first step into experimenting with gravity and the forces of nature.  I did this for a demonstration video on how to plant tomatoes, including the cartwheeled container because so many people have asked me about it.

Once the tomato was planted, my nurturing instincts took over, and I just had to keep the thing alive – after all, it’s not the plant’s fault it now hangs suspended from a soft plastic bag.  Besides, I want to see what all the hoopla is about.  So now it dangles in my backyard, more bag than plant this early in the season, a tomato in suspended animation.

I’ve been reading about these containers since their popularity soared last year, and know that the biggest drawback is that they weigh so much; the plant, wet soil, and fruit lead to disaster if the Topsy-Turvey comes tumbling down.  Customer comments and manufacturers warn you not to place this in a windy spot for this reason, which pretty much rules out every square-inch of Colorado.

So we make do, by choosing a strong support beam to hang the plant from, and use a hook big enough for the task; small china-cup hooks don’t cut it.

Choose what you plant wisely, going with compact plants with smaller tomatoes, such as cherry tomatoes or salad slicers, instead of giant beefsteaks. Caring for it should be similar to other vegetables in containers, easy as long as you have a plan and outdoor space.

Tomatoes need six to eight hours of sunlight daily, so put your plant in the sunniest location you have, adding supplemental light if you’re and apartment dweller whose balcony is on the north side of the building.

Prevent problems with soil pests or salt build up by using fresh, clean potting soil; don’t reuse soil left over from last year.  Once you’ve planted your pots, remember they’re now dependent upon you to provide for their needs. Containerized plants need water more often, requiring a drink at least once or, in very hot weather, twice per day.

You need to feed them too, which means fertilizer, because they can’t access naturally occurring nutrients. Balanced fertilizers are best; if you’d like to add a timed release into your soil mix, blend it in well before planting, following the ratios for mixing on the label.

But don’t be fooled into thinking that adding slow release fertilizer will take care of the the plant all summer; warm temperatures and moist soil will exhaust that fertilizer more quickly than the package suggests.  Plan on giving it a small boost of liquid fertilizer in mid season, just as it begins to produce fruit.

Plenty of tomatoes do well in containers. Try Early Girl or Celebrity for slicers, Sweet 100 or Tomatoberry for cherries. The list for tomatoes in containers is a long one; it’s best to check out the habit of the plant before you buy it.

Check out Carol’s Page for more articles, interviews and gardening tips.

What should farmers do about these superweeds? What does the problem mean for agriculture in the U.S.? Will it temper American agriculture’s enthusiasm for genetically modified crops that are engineered to survive spraying with Roundup?

Read the full article at the NY Times