KB Ranch

We’ve been getting some good work done on the house this week, both on the exterior doors and adobe in the front room.

This little curved part will be where the corner fireplace will go. Lots of cutting of bricks and fussing with mortar joints on this part. (Mortar is still wet in this picture, which is why it’s darker.)

The weather here has been nice, in the 70s during the day and close to, but not quite, freezing at night. (We’re supposed to dip down into the 20s this week. I wonder if that will be the end of my tomatoes.)

The final day of the Douglas Farmers Market was yesterday, and we helped coordinate a seed exchange, pumpkin decorating for the kids, and a fundraiser raffle.

We enjoyed selling at the market this year and found that doing so encouraged us to grow more food than I ever imagined we could.

We’ve past the autumnal equinox so it’s time to plant garlic and shallots for spring.

Last year’s crop was uniformly smaller than the previous year. There are many possible reasons:

• Lack of a mulch layer
• Quail eating the six inch baby plants down to zero inch nubs
• A brutal 24 hour wind in the spring that left the garlic permenantly bent over

All these will be addressed this year. Basically, we are mulching and we are using the insect netting on everything (wind and quail protection).

This year we planted a green manure cover crop (chickpeas) before planting the garlic. A yummy way to improve the soil.

We are stepping up the production of the Maiskij garlic this year. We love it; it grows well here; it tastes great and is easy to peel. Last year we planted about 140 of these.

We are also trying small batches of two garlic varieties, Music and German Porcelain. Both of these have few but very large cloves.

We continued growing shallots this year planting both the French grey ones (small) and the standard red ones again. I could be happy just growing the red ones, but it’s good to grow a variety.

The basics numbers of what’s ing the ground are:

300 Maiskij
14 German Porcelain
17 Music
50 Grey shallots
25 red shallots

garlic-bed-2013

Here’s hoping for a big year for alliums at Kbranch

The weather here is lovely. It’s relatively cool, and we even had more rain yesterday.

The garden is at its peak. Here was this morning’s harvest.

My fall lettuce, arugula, and tatsoi are coming in. The tomatoes are thriving (including finally the heirloom Georgia streaks, which are beautiful), and we’ve finally harvested honeydews. Sweet and delicious.

Brad put in about 200 garlic this week and will put in the other half next week.

We are saving lots of seed and getting more excited about starting a seed library here.