Karen's Garden Delights Journal
4th week of July 2011

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Oh my! I have been so busy harvesting, doing classes and entertaining guests the past few weeks that the weeds are starting to take over... The pig weed (amaranth) is especially enjoying the heat and growing lush, minute weed (galinsoga) is blooming and threatening to seed everywhere and some of the lambsquarter is as tall as I am. With the Wayne County Herb Society scheduled for a visit in two weeks and a cold frame seminar later in August, I have a big job ahead of me to whip things back into shape. Visitors are a good motivator to work on weeds in the middle of the summer when it would be easy to just ignore them. One cool evening I started attacking a few beds and I love the clean look that quickly appears as the kids haul cart loads of weeds to the compost pile. Some beds are ready to be cleared out for fall crops so I'm taking out the last straggling spring carrots and beets and replacing them with cabbage plants. We moved the trampoline frame with the shade cloth and put out some summer lettuce plants, lettuce seed and a double row of fall peas. I put in a row of calendula for fall edible flowers plus a last planting of sunflowers. I'm still waiting for cooler temps with some rain to start planting fall beets and carrots in the pea beds. With things getting dark by 9pm and the sounds of crickets and locusts, I'm reminded that summer is fleeting and it's time to be making more fall garden plans.

I'm thankful that the big task of pulling garlic is finished and now most of it is drying up in the barn. Our oldest son did a good portion of that job and we even let him skip chicken butchering last week to finish getting the garlic out before the predicted thunderstorm. Some of the Music garlic bulbs in a lower bed suffered some rot issues but overall I am pleased with how the garlic looks size wise and we should have a good amount to offer as seed garlic. See our product page for varieties and prices. With limited floor space this year, we needed to cart some of it up a ladder to dry on top of the hay. As I have time, we are bundling it to hang on my drying ladders. Keeping things sorted and labeled is a challenge with 17 varieties but I'm already making plans to add a few more kinds this fall. I ordered a pound of Romanian Red from Bobba-Mikes last fall already and I have a couple friends I plan to swap varieties with. I am also enjoying getting calls from people who bought garlic from me last year and planted it for the first time. However, this does make me a bit worried that I may have trouble selling my eating garlic since I've encouraged so many folks to grow their own!

Here are my latest lacto-fermentation experiments - dilly beans (that I tried blanching first to break down the phasin) and salsa. They always look so colorful in the jars. As I read more about the health benefits of fermented foods and beneficial bacteria, I am hoping we will have extra healthy digestive systems this winter. When I observe people who are obviously overweight or unhealthy looking I now start wondering how quickly a healthy diet could turn things around for them. The concept of food as medicine becomes more and more fascinating to me as I learn more about how God created things and the ways our ancestors knew to preserve and use food in nutritious ways. We live in a culture that considers "germ-free" as healthy and desirable when in reality some of the good bugs we are killing with anti-bacterial everything are very essential to good health.