Garlic - and canning season (Pickled Green Garlic)

The garlic is looking good.  Although we are weeks behind where it was maturity-wise last year at this time.  We've completed our first pass at weeding the beds. 

All tomatoes are transplanted.  Varieties this year are Hillbilly Potato Leaf, Illini Star, Blonkopfchen, Green Zebra, Martino Romano, Dester and Kellogg's Breakfast. (Our forever thanks to Penny at Wishful Acres for introducing us to Kellogg's Breakfast!)

Kale, Swiss Chard and a couple of pepper varieties are also transplanted.  Pepper varieties transplanted are Georgia Flame, Beaver Dam, Lipstick and Alma Paprika.

Memorial Day saw summer canning start again. 

Our first batch of pickled green garlic.

Onions! Leeks!

Bill prepped the soil in field 3. This field has been in a manure mix (field peas, oats and hairy vetch) since last August. I have to say that hair vetch may well be my new favorite plant. It is so amazing. Spring brought it back to a vibrant green and it is growing well and smothering weed cover. It is a nitrogen fixer and adds organic matter to the soil.

About 10 days ago, Bill mowed and then cultivated and finally ran the rototiller over beds within the fields. He then shaped the beds by hand.

Today we planted onions, leeks, beets, radishes and spinach. A red, white and yellow storage onion. Leeks. Beets. (wow, 40' of beets!). Radishes. Spinach.

1 bed down. 8 to go.

Tomorrow we are off to a permaculture seminar with a friend in Westby, WI. Taught by Mark Shepherd. We are excited to meet him!

Red onions

Bucket remover and plowing

As I mentioned in a previous post, Bill devised a way to get the bucket and arms off of the tractor by himself.

It is pretty nifty. Without the weight of that implement, the tractor is much easier to manuever. He can simply pull up, line up the connections, put the pins in (or out) and off he goes!


Here is a movie of some experimental plowing. We were trying different depths. After turning a row or two, we decided it was too wet.








We laid out 3 planting fields. Field 1 and Field 2 measured 80 x 100 and Field 3 is 80 x 60.

That old plow is not fooling around. We will use it respectfully on our soil. Upon turning the soil, it glistened - sandy loam! PERFECT for garlic farmers.

Yep, we installed a ROPS (Roll Over Protection System) - it is hilly there!!

1st pass

Spring planting

Finally got some seeds in the ground in the Chicago backyard.

I planted:

6 grafted apple trees - keeping them in Chicago for a year so I can baby them
Bull's Blood Beets
Arugula
Danver's Carrots
Purple top Turnips
French breakfast radish

Bill made a lovely supper last night of a pita with an egg on top, potato salad and a green salad.

I've also been able to ride my bike to work two times this week.