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

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The greenhouse plastic is now on but I need to make sure the door is open on sunny days as it can quickly get too hot inside. We have hoops up for the low tunnels but still need to get the row cover on and later in November add the layer of plastic. Actually, I'm still waiting for the ground to dry out so I can finish planting one area that will go under the tunnel. Other fall veggies are flourishing in the cool and wet, like these Daikon radishes that went home with our Nepali friends. They love this traditional food and eat both the greens and the radish part and the one fellow was describing how they ferment and then dry them. Our turnip crop is very nice this year also and almost every supper we cut one or two up raw to go with the meal. The frost that finally came at the end of the week should help sweeten them up even more.

We spent a morning this week busily shucking garlic meaning we had to separate the cloves from the bulb. It is not hard but does leave everyone with sore thumbs! We added soil amendments to the garlic bed and Olin disked in the afternoon but it still was plenty wet. It has been challenging to find dry spells for fall planting. Based on where the ground was a bit drier, I adjusted slightly on where we placed the garlic beds and then we raced the dark getting as much planted as we could. It rained overnight and I continued some planting the next day in rows that I had already made but it isn't much fun planting in the mud... We have about 2000 cloves in the ground and with about 1000 more to go but it looks like we'll need to wait till a sunny day next week to finish. After planting 5000 this past year, we decided it would be wise to scale back a bit to keep things more manageable - the children are rejoicing! New varieties this year are Romanian Red (the favorite from grower Bobba-Mikes in Marshallville), Ukranian Red from an Amish friend and Red Tochliavri from a Local Roots producer (I love the name!)

We ended the week going on film when Lehmans store came to video our family doing various chores. They are creating a customer based you tube video showing various folks who use their products and we represented the homesteader segment. Here the boys are getting apples ready for the dehydrator and we also were making a batch of cottage cheese and picking fall produce from the garden. The livestock who became "movie stars" that day were the naughty chickens who were scratching through my garden, Heidi the goat and Pansy the Jersey calf who especially enjoyed licking the camera. Stay tuned and we'll let you know when the video is ready for viewing so you can see our family and critters in action.