Sunday, July 16, 2006

Observations of the garlic harvest

It’s a lovely evening. The field and far hedgerow are golden in the late sun against some gray clouds. Today the haying of the field commenced. Allen got in about three passes before he called it a night. It seems awfully late this year. Usually they hay this field around the 4th. Perhaps it is all the rain.

The garlic is curing in the shed. Surprisingly the softnecks are the contenders this year. In the past it has always been the ophios. I planted a variety called Sicilian artichoke that Mike and Jim picked up for me at the Saugerties Garlic Festival last year. They are uniformly HUGE. I am very pleased.

I had several new ophio varieties this year. One was a purple stripe called Pskem. They sent up scapes long before the others and the bulbs were the largest of all the stiffnecks this year. My “old reliable” Spanish Roja just didn’t make the grade. It could be what I’m feeding them, or it could be that I used all my own seed stock this year.

The silverskins could have stood 10 more days in the ground, but I had to hurry things along this year as I am leaving Tuesday to join my husband in Paris.

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