27 February 04: Here are some gardening links ("and the joy we share as we tarry there, none other has ever known.")

• Our garlic farm

Our now-defunct community garden in April 2002: in need of weeding and other work.

Square-foot gardening

• The founder's site: Mel Bartholomew wrote Square Foot Gardening in 1981 after a bad experience with a community garden, but since nothing is ever really lost, he was able to turn the bad into a good set of guidelines for both community gardens and gardens in general.

      The book addresses ways to set up community gardens for success by following principles that work: sustained yields from small spaces, with an emphasis on planting only what you need. His website is your first stop in getting to know Mel and his method. Other sites are better-done and you will find them of more benefit.

• Farmer Brown's Garden Path: I found the URL for the mailing list at this website, and there are links and some pics about square foot gardening.

April 23, 2002: My garlic is up and growing.

Garlic

• Where I get mine: Not from Gilroy, I tell you that right now. Gilroy garlic is chaff. Let the wind have it. I get my planting stock from an organic grower, Yucca Ridge Farm, in Fort Collins, Colorado.
      I also have had good results with Filaree Farms in eastern Washington state.
      You need to order in the early summer for delivery in the early fall. If you wait until late in summer, some varieties will be gone.
  Types: Garlic has a surprising range of taste and heat. You might think otherwise, if Gilroy garlic is all you've had, but it's true. That's why I have been growing as many varieties as I can accommodate on my small plots. If a variety is not to my liking, I move on.
      My favorite is called Metechi. The link include a lot on text and some very good photos. Metechi, from Soviet Georgia originally, has a fine flavor and a wonderful finish (garlic tasters talk like wine tasters, odd as that may seem, at first ...). Lots of good garlic comes from the former Soviet republic of Georgia.

• Climate tolerance (all lecture, no links here): Garlic planted in the fall at a depth of 2 inches will survive Buffalo winters  (and worse) and jump up in early spring for an ever-changing show, plants up to six feet tall, and a harvest in July. In fact, garlic seems to prefer colder climates. New York is a good garlic zone in general.

• Harvesting (more lecture): It is important to pull your garlic at the right time. If you wait too long, the bulbs will lose most of their wrappers and begin to get dirt among the cloves. This promotes rot. This stage is still good for eating but the storage ability begins to suffer.

      Begin pulling an occasional bulb to see if bulbing has started around the end of June. If you have a lot, you can begin using the immature bulbs, or rounds, even earlier for bruschetta and cooking. If you have several varieties, remember that there will be some early and some late types among them in all probability, so check a few different types. I try to gauge when all are about the same degree of readiness and harvest on one day -- usually a very hot job. Don't leave your garlic in the sun, or it will cook. I trim the plants to about two feet long, and I trim the roots. I don't clip the tops. Some people do, some don't. There are some sharp disagreements on whether to clip the tops or not. The debate is really just part of the fun.Who cares, really?

• Guide to growing: Follow this link to get an overview of growing garlic.

• Elephant garlic: Ain't garlic, in botanical terms, or flavor, either. I am a longtime customer of Nichols Gardens in Albany, Oregon, and I hope you are, too, but it's not their elephant garlic that I like Nichols for, but their herbs. Nichols started the whole elephant garlic thing many years ago, and you can find out all you want to know there.

• Roasted garlic: cut the tips flat on a few unwrapped bulbs of garlic, drizzle with olive oil, salt and pepper to taste, wrap in aluminum foil, and place in the smoker, grill, or 350-degree F. oven for about 45 minutes. The result is a nutty, non-sulfurous garlic paste that you squeeze right onto good bread. I'd say yum, but I hate it when food writers on the Internet say yum at the end of every recipe they share. Yum is dumb, but roasted garlic is wonderful.

Peppers

• Hey, this is my niche: The Pepper Gal could say that. If you have heard of a hot pepper you'd like to try, odds are that the Pepper Gal sells the seeds.

• The Chili Pepper Institute: Pepper keywords -- New Mexico, Dr. Paul Bosland, David DeWitt.

Herbs

A man, a plan ...

• Herkimer & Perkins started out in 1995 as Herkimer & Perkins: An Urban Herb Experience.
      Great slogan, lousy sales, but I love the name and have kept it alive. I still have the banner we had made; it's hanging in the downstairs living room.
      I was Minister of Plants and my wife was Minister of Products. For a while we ran a classified ad in The Herb Companion, a good magazine.
  Richters Herb Specialists: Their nursery is about an hour north of Toronto, is a long day trip from Buffalo. I learned the hard way that you can't declare herb plants at the border and be able to bring them home without an inspection seal. Mail-order is the way to go, and Richters has a good catalog of seeds and plants and etc.
  Stephen Foster: Hang out with herbies and this name will come up. His books, with his photographs, are extensive.

• Medical Herb FAQ: Although this is an area of Usenet for experts, it still is interesting to see what the experts are saying about medicinal uses of herbs.

• Culinary Herb FAQ: Less fringe-prone than the medical herb portion of Usenet.

• Henrietta Kress: She's been online and active in herb-oriented newsgroups since at least 1995. At that time there wasn't much to pick from about herbs. There is now, but mostly commercial sites. Her website is a goldmine of photos, text, and links.

Community gardens

In early fall 2001 we visited the Michigan 4-H Children's Garden in Lansing, Michigan, on the edge of the campus of Michigan State University. The website is here. This was a shrine. Another fine public garden is the Robison Herb Garden on the campus of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Website is here. It was a Cornell Extension workshop on children's gardens that put us onto the one in Lansing. Nice bike path along the river there, too.I