There is always the clean-up! Although we don’t look forward to it, it is exciting when it is done and everything looks so nice. Ken has been hauling out trash and bringing back-hauls of market signs etc. up and down the stairs and in and out of the basement door of the house. He loaded the pick-up with a load for the dump and was able to get that dumped today. It is so nice to go into winter with a ‘clean’ slate.
The garlic is already rooted and starting to grow; we know because we had to dig one up and look…don’t worry we planted it right back and it will continue to grow, after all we ‘have’ to know how our plants are doing.
No, it isn’t up but this is what we are looking for.
And the seed catalogs are starting to come in the mailbox so we can begin planning and dreaming of next years crop.
I spent 2 hours the other evening peeling garlic cloves so that I could pickle them. I was surprised at how many it took for a pint of garlic, 9 medium size garlic bulbs for each jar. That would be about 72 cloves. I wore gloves not wanting to sleep with the smell of garlic on my hands all night. The gloves and even the knife that I trimmed the ends off with were very sticky, they had to be washed every few bulbs to get the sticky garlic off of them. Using my dill pickle recipe I processed three jars. The first one that was let down into the water bath broke, but I finally got them processed and sittin’ pretty on the counter.
I’m a thinkin’ that they might be opened for testing before the 4 weeks curing time is up. 🙂
