@gardening
Seems like a good time for a seasonal reckoning here! I’m a second year gardener, finishing up my second summer on the Puget Sound, so almost everything is new to me. I tend to ramble so I’ll try to thread this.
My particular bit of the world was rainy and cool for a long time this spring, then stayed cool and dried out all summer. We had one short heat wave in the mid 80s (I know) but that’s it, it’s back to crispy and cool now. The vast majority of my beds have drip irrigation, so the garden is ok.
The only thing I tried to grow this year that just utterly failed, no second chance, was #onions. I planted seeds in compost that was too rough and too cold, and I didn’t react in time to replant. Last year’s onions, in a different bed, grew like mad but then flowered early. Lots of lessons learned, and why not, I’ve ordered some fall onion sets. Onwards!
@gardening another big win: #garlic.
I grew so much garlic! I grew enough garlic to give away and to use like mad in cooking. The chickens damaged one of the three beds before I protected them, but two of the beds made so many fine bulbs. #leeks are coming along fine I think. I started two varieties, “verdonnet” and “mechelen blue,” this spring. It’s a rather intricate process - you start them outdoors, in very fine soil, and grow them in crowded rows until summer. Then they get transplanted into properly spaced rows in their full time beds. I’m at that stage - both varieties are knee high, but the dwarf ones are shorter. They look fine and nothing is bothering them, so they’re a win.
Harvested my garlic, but the bulbs are all much smaller than usual. Because I moving & not having any beds ready, I had to grow them in pots. With no rain from mid-spring onwards, they only got tap water, and that didn't help, along with the hot days.
But there is enough from each of the 8 cultivars to save the best for next year, and they'll have a proper bed to grow in again finally. So hopefully bigger & more bulbs next season.
This will be enough garlic for the two of us for much of the next year, so still a good harvest in general.