Garlic

Garlic is one of the easiest things to pop in the garden.  Remembering to do it is the hard part.  When you are cleaning up much of the other vegetable garden debris in the fall, that is the time to put in your garlic.
Choose bulbs in good condition, no cuts or soft spots.  Any garlic will do but if you want to braid your garlic, you will have to choose a soft neck variety.  Do a little research and you can decide which one you will like.  I usually end up with a hard neck variety.  The center stalk comes off of these like a stiff stick and is not going to braid no matter what you do.  I grow it to cook with so storing it in a mesh bag or basket in the basement serves my purpose well.  After  you have chosen the variety you want and hve selected bulbs in good shape you have to pull them apart like you are going to cook with the individual cloves-Don't take off all the papery husk from each clove though.  Each bulb will probably have 4-6 cloves each.  This is usually enough for me.  Chose the best cloves with no rot and of good size.  Small cloves will grow small bulbs, big cloves-big bulbs.  Loosen up the soil well and plant the cloves 5-6" deep.  Some books may advise less but this depth has been successful for me.  Cover with soil and walk away.
In the spring you don't have to worry too much about forgetting where the garlic was put in as it starts showing pretty early.
In early summer they will send up a flower stalk which will curl around as it grows.  When it is still not in bloom but curled, cut off this part called the scape.  The internet has many ways to cook with scapes.  They are mild in their garlic flavor.  Allow the garlic to remain in the ground until the leaves start to yellow and die.  Now is the time to pull it out (midsummer is about right).  Gently clean off the dirt and cut the stalks back to several inches.  Cut off most of the roots off the bottom.  Hang in a cool, dry location to cure.  Garlic cloves will store well into winter.
Garlic reminds me of my aunt, Ginny.  Aunt Ginny was born to Scandinavian parents but we always thought of her as Italian as she married a dark, handsome, Italian man from Chicago.  Aunt Ginny was blonde and very petite, but she learned how to cook Italian and her accent tells you she is from Chicago.  I will never forget the first time she made her garlic bread loaded with mushrooms and cheese on one of her visits to our little town in northern Wisconsin.  It was wonderful!  When anyone makes it we call it Aunt Ginny's bread.  Here's to Aunt Ginny's fantastic use of garlic!

Cucumbers

Cucumbers have been elusive to me in my garden.  They start growing and producing only to succumb to the wilt  carried by the cucumber beetle.  Yes, I could spray something to keep them at bay and have lots of cucumbers but that is not my style.  I want to do everything I can as organically as possible because that is the main benefit to growing your own.  Anything I buy really is a mystery up until the point of purchase.  The other part is that I am a bit lazy when it comes to spraying.  I worked in a greenhouse and on a well manicured landscape for a large insurance company so spraying recreationally is not a hobby I want to undertake.  This year my cukes are hanging out behind my tomato plants on the south side of the house.  Plenty of moisture from the soaker hose when the rain has not been sufficient has helped.  I have picked two cukes so far in a nice small size with minimal seeds as an added benefit.  Years ago when I worked at a garden center we had these plastic forms to grow vegetables into shapes.  I may pull that out of my gardening box this year at least once to make heart shaped slices to amaze and delight my friends.
Cucumbers also are a memory vegetable for me.  My mother would take us kids down to the Rugg's house to pick pickling cucumbers in the heat of summer.  We were always barefoot and in shorts as kids so creeping through the cucumber vines was always produced fine scratches on our legs that itched and our feet became black from sinking into the rich garden soil.  The pickling cucumbers are not the smooth skinned cousins in the family.  The 3 and 4" fruits are very spiny and leave reminders behind in your palms.  To get them off the vine you have to twist and pull so they come loose.  We always picked a galvanized wash tub full to have enough pickles for the next year.
With two of the larger kids on each side of the tub, the cukes were carried to the car.  Mom paid Marie for her efforts and we went home to can the pickles that day.  Mom filled the tub with cold water at the outside faucet and we sat in the shade of the house scrubbing the spines and dirt off so she could can them.  By the time we were done, the spines had come out of our palms and the cold water had cooled us down.  We would stick our feet in the tub to finish the job.
The house was a hot and steamy place with the smell of vinegar heavy in the air.  Sometimes she made crock pickles, where they did some time fermenting before canning.  Other times she would stuff the cucumbers and dill with a garlic clove right into the jar. She added the vinegar which had been spiked with pickling spices, put on canning lids and bands and set them into the pressure canner.  The rattle and hiss is a sound you never forget.  The vinegar and spices are the smell you never forget.   I still love having fresh dill in the garden if only to run it through my hands and enjoy the tangy smell.  The dill would come from Jenny Hansen's garden which was just two houses away.  Jenny must have planted seeds all summer long as she always seemed to have a ready supply to share.
The dill would also find its way into a sliced cucumber salad that still tastes as good today as it did as a child.  Mom would thinly slice cucumbers and onions into a bowl.  Salt, pepper and vinegar were added along with a  bit of sugar.  After sitting awhile, the liquid was drained off and sour cream was added.  We ate this cold, cucumber salad over hot mashed potatoes.  The hot, soft potatoes and the cold crunch of cucumbers and spices is delicious!
My youngest has found the cucumber this season, and just in time for our home grown beauties.  She is adding more to her list of things she LIKES to eat when it comes to variety.  It is funny to see the things she adds as a teenager since she has been eating things like sauerkraut and green peppers since she was small.  She adds blander items as she gets older, not the other way around.
Take a stroll around the farm market and pay homage to the cucumber.  Now that you know those boxes of small ones are not just younger versions of the large cucumber you will understand the pricing difference.  Try a refrigerator pickle recipe and see how good a pickle can really be when you make it fresh.

Beans

Harvesting bean always reminds me of my mother.  She grew up during The Depression and their family lost one farm, moved to another and had two more children after she was born in 1928.  They had dairy cows, chickens, crops and a garden but there was still the need for coats and shoes that the farm did not provide.  Once the kids were old enough to work they pitched in.  This did not happen when they were 16 or 18 but in their single digit years.  The went to school and learned their lessons, but summer provided the opportunity to "farm out" the kids to others who needed the hands and paid for the labor.  My mother and her younger brother were particularly good at picking beans.  The worked quickly and did a thorough job of picking the plants clean so they were in demand by the neighboring farmer when he was in need.  Their labor in the beans fields meant there was enough money to get everyone a new winter coat.
The amount of beans I pick out of my 8' row of pole beans and similar row of bush beans is nothing in comparison to what Mom and Uncle Paul did. What they did was not for pocket change or last night's dinner.  Her story does come to mind each time I pick my beans in my own garden as a lesson in counting my blessings.  We are in our own recession now but I do not have to send my daughter out to work so she has a winter jacket.  She is saving up to maybe get a car someday and have some spending cash as she does not get an allowance from us for that.  She will also have some cash for her yearbook, dances, and sports extras that we don't cover.  She will not have to contribute that to the family income to make sure we all stay warm this winter.
I hear people complain about taxes, the cost of living and all the other things that are making them "tighten their belt".  I still see the same people take vacation, buy new cars, send the kids to camp, and finish decorating the house.  If this is what we consider rough times we don't know beans!

(Photos are of purple violetto pole beans raw and then cooked. They lose much of the purple coloring with the process, my kids always thought of them as magic beans when they did this>)

Tomatoes

Neither of my daughters likes tomatoes.  They will only eat them if they are cooked into a sauce, soup, or stew and will consume jars of salsa like no one else.  Give them a fresh tomato from the garden and they will peel it off the sandwich or salad to which it has been added.  I do not understand how they can enjoy a BLT without the T.  Fresh cherry tomatoes warm from the sun are perfect for popping in your mouth straight from the vine.

I give my younger daughter credit for trying.  As she nears 17 she is trying new foods much more frequently.  She actually put some tomato on her BLT the other night (it was store bought) and decided it still wasn't to her liking.  This year is finally the year I have tomato plants worthy of a blue ribbon.  Septoria leaf spot has infected all the soil in my backyard and I can not keep leaves on the plants no matter what tricks I use to try and stop it.  I didn't plant tomatoes or peppers for 3 years in an attempt to eradicate the disease from my soil but it didn't stop it.  This year I have my plants along my south side of my house.  They are gorgeous, green monsters that are loaded with green fruits.   I have also trellised a cucumber plant in the back of them as this is another plant afflicted by the dreaded cucumber beetle.  My neighbor sprays so when the population rebounds it is all over my yard devouring the plants and infecting them with the deadly virus.  I might get a real cuke off my own plant this year.  There is a nice salad size one that I don't think will see sundown tomorrow.  The soaker hoses and grass clipping mulch have also been very helpful to this year's crop.  This picture is just a few weeks old and the plants have put on more than two feet of growth since.
Right next to the tomatoes on the other side of my walk is our Sweet Autumn Clematis.  It is passing the first floor and heading for the second.  It will be to the roof line by fall when it is loaded with white blooms.  This year it has a special function.  The vines grow up our front porch and along the underside of the porch ceiling at the corner on their way up the trellising to the second floor.  A cardinal family has found it a worth spot to make a nest.  I just discovered her last night as I was tucking in the stray ends.  She seems less nervous about us being around today and has stayed on the nest as we go in and out of the house at this door.  We can also see the nest from our living room so I am very excited about watching the new neighbors out the front window.  I hope to get a good picture to share.

Rain and watering and the first harvest of summer

We finally got a welcome drink of rain after a long spell of heat with no precipitation.  I was out watering my rain garden with the hose last night after 4 days of waiting.  Watering ahead of a rain is not always a bad thing.  When the ground gets hard and dry it tends to repel water rather than soak it in.  Pre-watering will loosen up the structure (we have heavy, clay soils in our area that take lots of additional organic material to amend it) so it will absorb rather than repel the water from the rain.  Slow watering is always better than a quick watering.  Deep watering occassionally is better than frequent, shallow watering.  Using each of these techniques will help your plants to develop a deeper root system which makes it more drought resistant.  Early morining watering is also better so the leaves can dry off during the day to minimize disease problems.  Avoid the heat of the day when the water tends to evaporate faster than it can soak in.  Sun scald can also occur on some of your more sensitive plants. 
I am using soaker hoses around the roots of my tomatoes this year.  Right after planting I looped the hoses back and forth close to the root zones of the plants and held them in place where needed with the wide landscape fabic pins.  We mulched around the plants with grass clippings which is helping to reduce soil splash from rain on the plants and to help retain moisture around the plants.  I have a great spot on the south side of the house that used to be in the basketball zone in was home to spireas until they were removed (a friend took them for another landscaping project) this spring.  Lots of compost was added to the soil here and the plants are thriving!  I am eagerly awaiting the first tomatoes.  I have a Sungold cherry tomato which is in the front running but the Romas are not far behind.  The Celebrity tomatoes will be coming in for salsa and blt's soon enough.  Basketball is now a movable hoop which is no longer welcome in this area. 
We made it through the heat wave in Wisconsin and now look forward to the harvest of veggies.  I picked my first pole and bush beans yesterday and will cook those up for tonight's supper.  The dog was excited about the beans as they are his garden favorite.  He whines outside the garden gate while I am picking so he gets his share.  I hope to gather one more crop of lettuce from my early crop that I shaded with row cover from the heat.  I only plant it on the north side of the raised beds now because of the heat factor and it seems to have paid off.  The soy beans are going to be ready for fresh picking soon.  I hope to beat the field mice to the punch this year as they can strip the plants in short order.  They really are best cooked in the pods and salted with a cold beer to chase them.  I have not been able to find them at the farm market.  Even the Asian farmers in our area harvest them as dried beans. 
Stay cool and keep enjoying those evenings of friends and fireflies.

Getting started

I want to blog not for others, but for me.  I want to keep a garden journal that I can put in my photos and follow what I'm doing.  I want to remember what worked and what didn't when it comes to my garden.  If this doesn't appeal to you than read no farther.  This is where I begin my journey.