Fall garlic

My garlic order came yesterday. I probably don't really need to order garlic to plant, since I had such an excellent harvest this year, and could use cloves from my harvested heads.

But it's such fun to order new varieties - Chesnok Red, Early Italian Red, Red Toch, Shantang Purple, and Susanville. These were grown organically and certified disease-free, from a small, family-run farm, Hood River Garlic, in Oregon. My previous source (Gourmet Garlic Gardens, run by Bob, the Garlicmeister) in Bangs, TX, provided great garlic, too.


I won't plant the cloves until mid-October, or thereabouts. I could even wait until early November, too. I usually harvest in May and June, but this last year is the first I've had LOTS of garlic that we can enjoy through fall, at least.

Nature & gardening blogs

I've been enjoying reading other people's posts on their nature and gardening blogs. We share a community that wouldn't have been possible in immediate time in a pre-internet age.

I'm mindful, however, of the correspondence that keen naturalists and gardeners had via (very slow) posts that traveled by horseback, carriage, ship, and courier. Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, William and John Bartram, Asa Gray, Andre Michaux, Mark Catesby, John Jame Audubon, Lewis and Clark, among many others on this continent (North America), corresponded widely with fellow observers throughout the world, not to mention the VERY many others in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and South America. And they all depended on much slower transmission of observations and thoughts.

But I''m grateful for the ability of the internet to connect us (in a much humbler way) in real time, with our observations of nature and experiences in our gardens.

Time to head south?

The ruby-throated hummingbirds are whizzing around our 3 feeders -- there are at least 4-5; it's hard to tell. It's a reminder that fall is coming, even though there's plenty of warm weather ahead, the days are visibly shortening. A fellow garden blogger in northern B.C. reports a first frost warning (yikes!); another garden blogger friend in England is putting one of his pea patches to bed, and sowing mustards as a cover crop.

And I'm seeing monarchs coming through as they make their way south to Mexico, and their overwintering grounds in Michoacan.