This past weekend we gave planting garlic a shot. We haven't really grown any type of garlic yet, but we are dipping our hands into the herb to see how well it does were we live. We hope to have a good crop when it comes time to harvest, and use most of them for cooking and canning, so we shall see if we are garlic farmers when summer rolls around.
We started by clearing out a patch of area close to the house. The area under our garden hose was begging to be turned into some sort of flowerbed, or planting bed. My mother-in-law, Cheryl, actually grew up in the house that we are living in currently and said the area that we cleared out was once a flowerbed when she was a little girl. With just river rocks and bark mulch in our way, we raked and hoed on the area until it was pretty clear of debris. I loved how it turned out once we cleared the area completely.
Skylar is always such a big helper!
We used three eight-pound bags of organic potting mix from the local farm supply store, Wilco.
We planted three different varieties just to see which one does the best. We expect to lose a few of them to animals, or rot, but overall we should have plenty survive. With any luck, all three will be great harvests next year.
We decided to plan the entire bulbs from the garlic cloves we bought, since the roots on them were very thin and small. We may be swimming in garlic come harvest time, but we plan on canning a lot, cooking with it, and pickling it with cucumbers and by itself. I've also been learning how to braid garlic, so we are looking for a large harvest next summer for sure!
With all of the rain lately, we haven't had a chance to manually water our plants or trees. Sometimes the Oregon rain is helpful.
Unfortunately, the rain also doesn't work well with untreated Adirondack chairs though. We ended up saying goodbye to the 13-year-old Adirondack chairs Jeff and I got when we moved in together in 2000. We were able to salvage some pieces to use in other ways, but its chair days are over. We are on the hunt for some new ones as we speak though, and there are so many styles to choose from. Here's one we've had our eye on lately.
We love this look with the natural hardwoods. This one comes from World Market and is on sale right now for only $99!
We have seen a few more that we like too.
2. Amazon.
Our options are very much open. Next spring we will finally make the decision. In the meantime, I will find use of the parts from the old chairs and wait out the Oregon rain.
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