My Hands in the Soil = Blissful Happiness

Today it was 70+ degrees again.  The wind had been been roaring for the past 2 days.  DH unearthed the tiller and pushed it out to our small spot (between his parents house and the old dilapidated house next door) where it is too shaded for most garden veggies.  It's where we will plant our green beans, lettuce, spinach and garlic.  He got it good and tilled and I got our garlic and a row of spinach planted.  There is a bit of clay in the soil and it packed down pretty hard when I crawled around on it planting the garlic.  We'll have to work on getting it more friable little by little.

Because I'm not sure what was what when I dug up the garlic out of my old garden late last summer I'm hoping to identify everything when I dig it up this coming summer/fall.  The varieties that they could be are...

• Metechi
• Nootka Rose
• Kidwell Heirloom
• Klaver
• Khabar
• Music
• Lorz Italian
• Some kind of bulb that doesn't make cloves.  It kind of looks like tulip bulbs.  Go figure.

I had bought all of this garlic from the late Travis Weedman in 2009.  Although we had only corresponded a few times via e-mail I miss being able to talk with him about the garlic.  He had a lot of knowledge and his garlic was top notch!  I'm sure he would know what my mystery garlic is!!  He helped me out by selling me as many varieties with my $40 that he could.  He was actually over generous.  I had harvested a couple of those original 10 varieties in 2010 and didn't replant.  Those are gone now.

Other than those couple of varieties that I harvested I wasn't able to dig up the others and they came back up on their own in 2011.  The bulbs were small and not of good quality but I had to save Travis' garlic.  I had hoped to get it in the ground last fall but DH's back wasn't up to using the tiller and so I had to wait.  Now it's in and I'm excited to see how it turns out.  :-)

I was kind of weirded out that when I was researching the different types of garlic that I have on Google
Images I kept running across my blog and pictures that I had taken of my garlic bed and garlic braid...

Fall 2009

Spring 2010

I loved this braid made from Chet's Italian

(bought from Territorial Seed which I'm not growing)

Oh how good it felt to get my hands into the soil and do some planting!!  Good therapy for a troubled soul!!  The kids kept commenting how happy I looked after I was finished.  ;-)  Blissful sigh.