Belated Garlic Harvest (and other garden news)

Perhaps I should rename my blog--something along the lines of "Adventures in Procrastination". Or some such name along that theme.

I've spent the last couple of days FINALLY getting the rest of my garlic out of the ground. DH had mowed over them thinking they were weeds but they quickly grew back. Sigh. They should have been harvested months ago since it is now time to replant. So I've replanted the best of what I dug up into a new, sunnier spot.

A good haul...

but embarassing!

You're SUPPOSED to harvest before it gets all that green stuff!!

The ones in the top right corner were havested earlier--a tad late...

last August.

But my procrastination was still hard at work.

I never washed them and they still have a layer of mud/dirt

caked onto them.

I'm working on mincing them all up a little at a time as I have a few spare minutes.  I'm just going to can them in small jars for prepared minced garlic.  It's all hardneck garlic and it'll be just as easy to store them canned as any other way--just a little more work initially.  :-)

I've ordered some softneck garlic.  My favorite kind...  Chet's Italian.  It's beautiful, tasty, and makes a wonderful braid.  Can't wait for it to come in.

We had a pretty hard freeze on Sunday night and I did my best to cover everything up.  There was a bit of frost damage but it was minimal.  I still have a lot of stuff waiting to ripen up and we have some beautiful weather yet ahead of us (according to the weather forecast). 

Down the road a bit there's a garden that I've been watching all year.  It was nice and tidy all summer long but I saw a few weeks ago that the owners had cleared it completely out.  They even mowed down their big line of ornamental grass (which looks best, in my opinion, in the winter!!) along their driveway.  Seems kinda weird to me.  My tomato plants are still huge and going strong.  We still have peppers and cucumbers growing.  Our squash and gourds are still on the vines.  I'm just not ready to give up summer until I HAVE to.  Sure it's a little work to cover everything up but it's worth it to me!!  Working in the garden in the fall is just about my favorite thing to do anyway.

Just look at the size of those monsters!  7-8 Feet tall

The brown is the frost damage.

Poor foolish tomato blooms that will never see a fruitful harvest.

And there's still so many blooms.  :-(

Still so many tomatoes left to ripen.

Baby cucumber

Birdhouse gourds still on the vine.

The Virginia Creeper leaves "littering" our driveway.

Beautiful fall color!!

Needless to say, I have a to-do list a mile long of all the things I have to get finished before the cold weather is here to stay.  Thankfully, we have a lot of nice days still to come.  And so off I go--back into the fray  :-)

Have a great week!!!