Discussion: Make a little birdhouse in your soul

Blue canary in the outlet by the light switch, who watches over you

:) I love those guys.

Its garlic planting time. I have some cloves to send you. Waiting on a couple more varieties in the mail. Do you have space for more? My boss is planting this weekend. I'll probably plant next weekend. Need to turn-in the vetch and compost tomorrow.

You see, I didn't even realise that was them until last night! I had to google it. Turns out they wrote it when I was 6, so I don't feel that bad about not knowing!

Ooohhhh garlic! I could probably plant slightly more than last year but not much more. Thank you! I just had to ditch all my kale today because I had a massive aphid infestation - there was nothing on them last weekend! Pretty annoying, that would have lasted me well into winter.

Though I respect that alot, I'd be fired if that were my job,
after killing Jason off and countless screaming Argonauts.
Bluebird of friendliness, like guardian angels its always near...

I ordered two new garlic varieties - just a sampler really, since I have lots of seed cloves set aside from last year. The new varieties are a turban called "Uzbek Turban" and a new type (Creole) called "Spanish Benitee" - the creole cloves have red wrappers. I'll send you some of each, and some of my own "Music." I also have some "Tzan" turban from last year, which did very well. The turbans are early maturing. The Tzan was ready several weeks before the Music, and it fell over when it was ready - almost like a softneck, but about half of them sent up scapes. They're all organic. I should have the new ones by late next week. I usually try to plant by Halloween. The soil is still very warm here, but the weather is supposed to cool next week.

Sorry to hear about your kale. Someone at work gave me 4 "Russian lettuce" plants and I put them in with the carrots after the groundhog attack. They're doing well, but I found a lettuce-colored worm eating one. The carrots have also recovered from the attack. The fortified fencing has been effective. The Bell peppers have rallied and I've harvested two nice red ones, with lots of green still on the plants. Also dumped one container of spuds today - 8 lbs, 3oz. The others still have big solar panels so I'll let them go a couple more weeks.

Some pics of the spuds and fall carrots here. You can see the carrots just after the attack on the previous page (and some shots of Cato being cute :).

I've just been informed that the "Russian lettuce" I'm growing is in fact Russian Kale :) The green worm was likely a cabbageworm. Will kale come back in the spring if I leave it in the ground?

I have no idea! George might know. Mine seemed like it was in no danger of dying off until the aphids got it, so it wouldn't surprise me if it makes a comeback.

I finally received the new garlic varieties yesterday and put a sampler into the mail for you this afternoon. You should get it Thurs or Fri. It took 3 weeks longer than I had planned - various issues...first online order didn't go through, then it took them 12 days to get around to filling my next order and by that time they were out of the Uzbek...on and on. The good news is the ones they sent are really lovely. Big bulbs with big cloves.

So I sent 4 varieties: Romanian Red, Spanish Benitee, Tzan and Music. The Tzan and Music are from my garden this year. They're all organic. The Tzan should mature first, so if you have a "front" of your bed you might plant those in front. Most of the cloves are nice and big, but I put in a few smaller Benitee ones. Plant the biggest first and if you're tight on space you can just eat the babies :) Better to plant or give to someone else to plant if you have leftover big ones.

I also threw in some Marigold and Dill seeds collected from the garden this year.

Wow, thanks Eddie! I look forward to an exciting package in the mail!

Just saw this - Overwintering kale? Maybe. Can't up here because we get winter! It will last till about Jan but then freeze up. I've left it in some years either because it's frozen in or covered in snow pack. But you don't get winter down there so might make it.

Pulled kale just because of aphids? Wash them off with soapy water. Should get them. And for cabbage moths use BT spray on the plants. Will work for a while until heavy rain or new growth appears. We're constantly fighting them and Lyn likes to chase after the moth with the butterfly net.

Ok, thanks. I'll leave it in and see what happens in the spring.

Becky, the package tracking says its out for delivery, so you should get it today.

I decided to plant 2 rows of small cloves from large bulbs as an experiment. I've read that bulb size is at least as important as individual clove size in determining the resulting yield. Given that these large Spanish Benitee bulbs had an inner ring of smaller cloves (unusual among hardnecks - common for softnecks), I thought a test was in order. Small and large cloves from the same large bulb planted.