Heirloom garlic planting

Back in September, after the pepper garden was razed, I decided to plant some heirloom garlic for next season. I had surprisingly good success this year with just some ordinary supermarket garlic that I planted on a whim, so I figured that investing in some good quality seed stock would be exponentially better. I decided to purchase my garlic stock from D. Landreth Seed Company since they had a booth at a craft festival in our area back in the spring. They have a really nice collection of heirloom seeds and a neat artistically illustrated catalog. I've never bought from the before, but the seed stock that I received from them was gorgeous.

Chesnok Red

Nootka Rose

Italian

Tzan

The soil here is pretty fertile, but I freshened the plot up with a few bags of leaf compost anyway and gave everything a good once over with my cultivator. After gently breaking apart the cloves, I laid them out in rows spaced about 6 inches apart and pressed them about 2 inches into the soil. In total, I planted about 110 cloves. So next year's harvest should be big.

This past weekend, we already have plenty of green growth. Most of this will either die back or go dormant once it gets really cold around here, but this early growth will help prevent the garlic from heaving out of the soil once it freezes. I've also covered everything in a thick layer of lawn clippings. I've found this is a great mulch and really minimizes weed growth.

Well, that it's for now. In June, I should have plenty of garlic necklaces for everyone!

welcome to dirtology!

This will come as news to my regular blog readers, but I have been invited to mirror my dirtology posts on the website Grow Indie. Needless to say, I am pretty excited to now be a contributor to a real gardening website. This blog started out merely as a way for me to keep a record of my gardens and to send my mom pictures of the veggies that I had waiting for her. Who knew that people would find this blog a useful resource and were actually interested in reading what I had to say. To all of your that have been reading for the past year or so, thanks for your support!

Now, to my new readers on the Grow Indie site, I should probably provide a little introduction. My wife and I live in Keedysville, MD (hardiness zone 6B) an about a half acre of rocky clay. I have about 250 square feet of garden space, most of which is in the form of raised beds given the poor soil quality of our lot. We've only lived in our current home for about 2 years, and so the gardens are still maturing. Neverthless, I've had a lot of success thus far and I'm definitely growing enough vegetables to share with friends and neighbors. This year, we've also started learning to preserve our harvest by canning, making jellies, and bottling sauces. I'm definitely not 100% organic (especially when insects are devouring my crops), but I do my best and I'm always trying to find earth-friendly gardening practices. I especially like inventing ways to repurpose broken or discarded items in the gardens - they're free and less trash helps protect our environment. Although recently I have found myself wishing that I had pursued a career in agriculture, I spend the better part of my days working as a research scientist. I hope you all enjoy my blog, and I invite you all to find a little piece of earth and become a dirtologist yourself!

The results are in ...

After a productive second season here at Dogstreet Farm, things have officially come to an end. In total, I harvested approximately 215 pounds of produce this year! Thanks to all those who supported my garden and enjoyed my produce.