This is a bit of mini harvest post – brought to you by the wonders of WordPresses scheduled publishing facility. I am (hopefully enjoying myself) in Sydney at the moment on a camping holiday – unfortunately, and possibly typically, Melbourne’s weather forecast for this week is divine and Sydney’s is pretty average but I am hopeful of enough non weather dependent activities to keep everyone entertained. It had better be nicer next week when we hit the beach on the NSW south coast though……
I did harvest a fair bit (about 80 heads) of garlic before I left – a couple that I initially pulled had started to get a bit mouldy – I think this may have been aphid weakening the stalk more than the bulb rotting per se but I’m speculating. The majority were pretty good though, albeit variable in size. I do think they would have probably benefited from being left in the ground a little longer though. Here is a sample:
As well as growing garlic in the ground – I also planted some in polystyrene boxes – I harvested from the last box this week. I was pretty pleased with the results – decent and pretty uniform bulb size.
I still have about 20 garlic plants growing so it will be very interesting to compare and see if they suffer, or benefit, from the extra time in the ground.
The only other thing I managed to photograph in this – a shortened harvesting week – was this plate of salad ingredients:
In fact I harvested this same combination quite a few times this week. This particular mix went under some fried haloumi for lunch.
I’m not sure if our campsite has WIFI so I may be very quiet for the next couple of weeks. If so normal service will be resumed in a fortnight.
In the meantime though there are fabulous harvests to be viewed if you head over to Daphne’s Dandelions.
Hope you had a lovely holiday and there were plenty of vegetables waiting for you when you got back.
Enjoy your camping holiday…
Have a great holiday and great to see your garlic. I harvested all of mine last week and some were rotting in the ground, possibly from all the rain we have had. I will interested to see if your garlic that have kept growing longer was bigger or not. Please post about it when you harvest.
Happy camping! I wonder if you are self-catering…
Have a wonderful camping holiday! I hope that you took some of those wonderful salad greens with you!
Great to hear the garlic harvest went well, great idea growing in the poly boxes (i didn’t think they would be deep enough) and great for people with not much room.
Hope the weather warms up and you and family get to swim in the ocean !!! just love the beach!!………..collectimg shells and all……………Enjoy!
Beautiful garlic!
Happy camping 🙂
Garlic looks lovely, and I’m sure it’s all going to make its way into some amazing dishes over the next few months. Hope the camping trip is going well and that you enjoy your time on the NSW south coast. I absolutely adore this part of the country and have holidayed there (near Eden to be precise) since I was in primary school. It was an incredibly long drive considering I grew up in Western Victoria. We’re heading up for a week or two in February – I’ve checked the long term forecast and they have predicted above average rain for Feb. For some reason we often get rained in on our beach holidays, but I still love it.
We camped in Pambula and if you are of the camping persuasion I would highly recommend the caravan park – heaven for young kids – heated pool, bouncy pillow, kids club, great playground, mini golf and right on the beach. You may well have stayed there? That is a really long drive from Western Vic – we broke the return journey in Lakes and I still found it tough going with the kids. Hope the weather is better for you – we had occasional showers and 21 everyday which was tolerable but far from ideal……
Pretty garlic. Have a great camping trip.
Nothing like fresh garlic and salad greens – yum! Have a great time and I hope the sun is abundant for you by the time you hit the beaches.
Ah, I am enjoying my fall/winter harvest, but it is lovely to see summertime plenty. Your photos are very pleasant.
Glad that your garlic growing in polystyrene did well. You have plenty to ward of vampires. Have a fun holiday.
Wow 80 heads of garlic- that’s impressive! Enjoy your camping holiday. Hopefully you’ll be welcomed home by a bountiful harvest!
Congratulations on the haul of garlic! We had problems with mites this year, will have to make sure we clean them up better after harvesting next season…
I hope you are enjoying yourself! Those garlic look yummy!
Lynn
Thanks all – the camping went very well – thanks more to the child friendly facilities at the camping ground than the weather which quite frankly was pretty ordinary. I think Melbourne gets a pretty bad rap about its weather but frankly its usually pretty good (or a damn site better than Sydney’s was).
Andrea – the poly boxes seem to come in two sizes and I use the deeper for garlic. The shallower are fine for things like lettuce and strawberries though.
Mark & Robin – we did self cater but because I get confused about where you can take produce from and too in Australia I didn’t take anything with me harvestwise. A friend had to leave 2 months supply of onions at the South Australian border because of fruit fly controls, so now I buy on arrival.
So glad you are back.