Garlic best crop ever!

On May 18th we harvested our garlic, usually one waits til June around here to harvest garlic. Our garlic was huge and falling over, time to harvester anyway. The last few times were grew garlic we ended up with little garlic that took a long time to clean when you cook with it, not my cup of tea. These garlic were purchased at the food co op (Weaver Street Market) last fall, the cloves were huge and Meg planted like 24 of them in two short rows.

Here is the garlic right after harvesting it. I'm a big guy and my hands are pretty large, this gives you an ideal how big they are.

Here is the garlic after the mud dried on them and Meg shook off the dirt. Those white bars are one inch apart. We have already cooked with some and it was pretty tasty! To think of all the gardeners who go to great lengths to find special garlic and we did this good from co op garlic! No this is not Elephant garlic.

These is the carrots we pulled up, maybe 4 pounds of them, we still have a patch of them in the ground. That is a 5 gallon bucket lid to give a sense of their size.. Steamed carrots have been on the menu and well as lots of carrots in salad. We have not pulled the salad greens, they are about finished as is spinach. We still have lots of Swiss Chard.

Newly planted in the garden are tomatoes, peppers, summer squash, dill, Thai basil, tomatillos and Armenian Yard-Long Cucumbers. First time planting Armenian Yard-Long Cucumbers they are tasty and huge as one might gather from the name, anyway I am excited about them.

Our flower gardens are lush right now! Best looking butterfly weed we have ever grown, the butterflies are enjoying it. Lots of spiderworts blooming the bees love them. Below is a Oriental Poppy (4-5 foot tall) from the farm where I have a bee hive down the street, These are the poppies I mentioned had 2-3 bees in each flower gathering pollen or nectar.

 

I spent an hour today in 85 degree heat checking the 5 bee hives here in the yard. The mother hive that swarmed weeks ago and had no brood in it, is full of eggs! The others except the top bar hive are doing well also. The top bar hive had no recent brood, just capped brood. I did see 3-4 swarm cells so they will make a new queen shortly, hopefully not swarm as  they have not grown very much in the 6 weeks I have had them. All the combs were covered in bees.

Yep this is yours truly with my top bar bees. That bar is not fully drawn out on one side. They got their first real inspection today.

Last bit of news, today we had a new male cat delivered. We'll either foster it or keep him. He is a year old and very people friendly, we'll see how he does with Valentine our girl cat. Not going to show you a photo yet, he is sort of like a Siamese cat crossed with an Orange Tabby. His ears are slightly orange and his tail is slightly orange and ringed. Thinking of calling him either Latte and Mel. Mel actually would be short for the scientific name for honey bees Apis mellifera or Mellow.