I have worked a little in the garden on Saturday and Sunday Aug 24 and 25 to propagate some perennials.

I cleared the yard around the goumi fruit tree. I removed few sunchokes from there and cleared the pathways. I don’t know why I planted sunchokes there. I don’t think it was a good idea. They block the light to the goumi tree. After that I redesigned the pathway. That is one reason I don’t like raised framed beds. They can be hard to modify if you don’t get the layout right the first time. I harvested a lot of peppermint leaves and hung to dry. I planted Egyptian bulbils. I was happy to see that the sunchokes didn’t smother the sorrel plant I have in that part of the garden.

Sorrel

Sorrel is a resilient vegetable. I used it to make salad. I don’t even feel the need to grow lettuce. Sorrel put lettuce to shame in my garden. Sorrel leaves is not soft like lettuce which I like. I used it in cooking instead of spinach which I don’t purchase any more. For my need, I calculated that to have enough supply of green for salad once a week during the growing season, 2 plants of sorrel per person is a good projection. I let mine go to seed. I usually removed the seed stalks around August when they turn brown. By that time, they tend to grow shouts on the stalks. I removed many of the shouts to replant in the garden. Sometimes, I like to lay it down after I harvested the seeds. I mount dirt on the stalks around the shouts to let them root. This year, I didn’t have space around most of them to do that so I just remove the shouts and planted around the garden. They root quickly if the soil around the shouts is kept moist. I don’t water my garden. When I planted them the first time, I water them with water I used to rinse vegetables. Most of the shouts didn’t grow. The ones that were in moist dirt rooted. I have pulled few from the ground level with roots and transplanted with success. Few weeks later when it started to rain, many of the transplants that I tough didn’t grow started to grow new leaves.

Garlic: Hard Neck, Soft neck, Garlic Bulbils

I harvested garlic this year. I usually don’t harvest my garlic. I just leave them alone. They come back every year. I harvested the soft neck ones first. Contrary to what is said about them, soft neck garlic, do grow seed or bulbils on their main stalk. They don’t flower or I have not seen them flower before. They bear their bulbils few inches above the ground. Each plant could have about 4 bulbils. I have seen a plant that has bulbils on two areas on the stalk, on clump few inches above the other. Each clump has about 5 bulbils. Soft neck bulbils are a little bigger than hard neck bulbils. I left the hard neck garlic in the ground until mid-August to allow the bulbils to ripe on the flower stalks. I harvested them and let them to dry in the garage.

On Sunday August 25, 2019, I separated the bulbs into cloves and planted many of hard neck and soft neck garlic in the back yard. Some bulbs cannot be separated yet. The bulbils when planted grow into a bulb that cannot be separated into cloves. The second year they grow into bulbs that can be divided into cloves. I planted the whole bulbs that I couldn’t break into cloves.  Usually I let the bulbs dry in my garage until October before I planted them. However, knowing garlic stay in the ground in my garden year around, I didn’t see the point of waiting October to plant them. In October, the weather could be cold making it challenging for me to stay in the garden for an extended period of time. Therefore, it just came to me that for a plant that lives year around in the garden, there is not point for me to wait October to replant them.

Sunchokes

I removed all the sunchokes plants from the horseradish bed. They tend to shade my blackberries patch. I weeded the bed a little and planted garlic and Egyptian onion bulbils. I removed all the blackberry plants from that bed. I left, two horseradish plants, one currant plant, and 3 arugula plants there. I moved one arugula plant from that bed to my kitchen garden and it is doing well. The bed is not framed. I just used tree branches to line up the contour. Usually my pathways and the garden beds are equally mulched making it hard to know where the plants are and where to walk. Therefore, I like to use branches to show the planting areas. I planted some of the sunchokes I dug, outside of the fence along the edges of the properties. Some of the plants have sunchokes without the brown skin on them. I harvested few of these to plant.

Persimmon

The fruits are still on the tree and they are fairly small.

Green Beans

The green beans are growing. Kids eat the baby beans.

 

Turnips/ Rutabaga

I have few turnips greens growing in the garden. I didn’t plant them this year. I harvested some leaves to cook a stew using soup bone. I have two rutabaga in the garden growing well.

Raspberries fall crop is ripening. This year we harvested raspberries in late spring and summer. I cut the canes that produced fruit in Mid-July. By mid-August the fall crop started to ripe. The kids like to harvest them for their snacks.

Grape

The concord seeded grape started ripening the last week of August. The kids harvested more than 4 cups of it on 8-29-2019 to eat alongside their bananas sheet pancake dinner.

Blackberries

We harvested few blackberries after mid- August.

 

Egyptian onion

I planted them in August. They started to grow. Some are a foot tall already. I still have more bulbils to plant.