October | 2015 | Secret Wool Society

I’m a little embarrassed to admit it, but I harvested my garlic this week. 10 days from November. I’m really lucky there isn’t snow on the ground.

Let’s talk about what an awful gardener I’ve been this year. Wait, let’s not. I think it’s obvious. The good news is that the garlic is still totally fine! The bad news is that I need to eat it all fresh – or figure out what else I can do with it soon (pickling, freezing, etc). The thing is, when you don’t harvest it at the time you’re supposed to (let’s say, August, in my case), the garlic will think that it should start to get ready for the winter. So once the weather starts to get a bit chillier, like it has been here, each clove will start to get green sprouts (similar to what happens when I plant garlic in the fall for harvesting the next year). As well, all those layers of skin that help the garlic cure, have pretty much just fallen off – some skins on my garlic are still intact, but most have come off.

Also, harvesting it at this point is more difficult. The stalks are all dried out, so you really need to dig deep and pull the bulbs by hand. No big deal, just a little extra effort. I say no big deal, but I was actually cursing quite a bit.

So the moral of the story is: harvest your garlic on time if you want to actually be able to cure it properly for long term storage. Otherwise, be prepared to have a lot of garlic that you can only use in the short term.

And as always, the best part of the garlic harvest (besides eating it) is the wonderful smell of fresh pungent garlic filling the air of my home. I love it.

Sometimes I’m not an awful gardener! Here is proof (last year’s garlic harvest)!

How is it possibly the middle of October already? I’m having a hard time expressing my guilt over not updating my blog in quite awhile. The truth is, life got in the way. But I’m here.

This gardening season was pretty much a big fat bust. It started off really strong, but got destroyed somewhere in the middle by the big hail storm. It bounced back a bit, but was pretty disappointing all around.

The community garden took the biggest hit – which is funny since it is almost directly across the street from our garden at home. Our home garden got it pretty bad, but somehow the community garden got it worse. The community garden didn’t really bounce back and I pretty much just abandoned that garden for the season (don’t worry, I eventually cleaned it out like a good gardener).

My lone alley pumpkin – I’m shocked that I even got this guy! My pumpkins plants took a huge beating from the hail.

Surprisingly my squash and tomato harvest at home was better than anticipated. The squash plants mostly bounced back and then started producing edibles. As for the tomatoes, there were a lot of bruised and un-salvageable fruits (probably about 1/3 of the harvest), but all of the undamaged tomatoes were amazing.

So now the season is basically finished, and I’m left with the task of cleaning up the garden remains and getting ready for the upcoming winter. In all honesty, I’m actually glad that the garden season is finished – I just need to put that difficult season behind me. I’m sad, but I also feel a bit of relief – this time of year is always difficult.

My cauliflower harvest consisted of just this guy.

In order to try to get myself pumped up for the end of the season, I’ve recently become obsessed with natural yarn and fabric dyeing. So I’ve been scouring my own garden to see what sorts of things I can collect and experiment with. I was able to get a pretty decent harvest of marigolds from the front yard (I’m still waiting for my mordant to arrive, so you’ll need to wait to see the results. I know, I’m impatient too). I also harvested the few rose hips that I had (why is it that when you actually decide to do something with them, the harvest is so weak?) – I’ll have to forage for some more. And I’ve also got an indigo dyeing kit that I cannot wait to try out. I know there isn’t much time before the snow arrives, so I need to get started on the experiments very soon. In addition to the dyeing experiments, I’ve also been making a mental list of some of the projects I can keep myself busy with this winter (needle felting, maybe learning to crochet, starting a big knitting project, more weaving, some sewing adventures) – and I am getting a little excited about them.

Lots of marigolds waiting to be used as dye!

Finally, my apologies for not updating the blog in awhile – I was doing everything I could to avoid facing the damaged garden, including neglecting my poor (primarily gardening) blog. I’m going to try my hardest to get back on a regular posting schedule – I love writing about gardening, and cooking, and crafting, and whatever else. I will make an effort. Let’s put this season behind us – onwards and upwards!