Mickey's garlic and some updates...

My horseradish is *still* getting murdered by these damn cabbage worms.. *sigh*.

It's even sadder now, since this photo was taken a few days ago. Those things are ferocious out there..

The hops are also keeled over now, but that's just the normal course of business for them for this time of year. Check 'em out:

Everything else is doing much better. Stuff in the hoop house is still growing.. I've got several true leaves on all the lettuces and the arugula's now.. the radishes are up with a vengeance. The mint is also doing quite well, since I thought that plant was on it's way out for some reason. But, it's back and happier than ever now..

Also, me and the kids went on a field trip to Mickey's garlic place in New Hartford. Here's a couple shots of his greenhouses and stuff:

Kinda rustic in spots but, apparently, this guy is sort of a big thing around these parts. He's the only person I've heard of that grows big amounts of garlic around here that you can use for seed garlic, because it hasn't been treated with anything weird or chemically. I'll still probably plant some organic garlic of a different variety from the store in a plot out back, but I don't have as much hope for that as I do with this stuff from Mickey's place. I know his garlic will work just fine, because it's already acclimatized to our area and be pretty much ready to go. Speaking which, I got a hand full of these guys from him, German hard-neck White bulbs:

I got about 30 or so cloves of these guys to let loose in the beds. I'll plant 'em up next week or so, when the rain let's up a bit.. stay tuned!

Amaryllis..

I think that's how you spell it, anyway. It's a huge bulb my dad gave me the other day, and he told me to plant it in this teeny tiny little weird looking pot. But the pot is so cool, I had to take a couple shots of it to show.. check it out:

It's got a completely glazed lower section, and a half glazed upper section, so the inner pot sits inside the outer pot, which you fill with water, and then the water seeps through the wall of the inner pot and slowly waters the plant over time. Neat. Bizarre, too.. but neat.

They sure don't give much room in here for this big monster though.. damn near thought I was gonna have to chop this thing into quarters to get it in there!

That's all I got right now..

Turnips! Garden update? Global bucket disassembly.

Those turnips I photo'd and posted last time?

A big one and a little one. The others? Well.. they didn't blow up.. they just bored straight down and looked more like skinny carrots. Dunno what happened there, but these were the two that were useable. So.. I chopped 'em..

Sauté'd 'em in just a bit of olive oil..

..and then slapped 'em with some butter and ate 'em.

They were actually fantastic! I was expecting a more bland, potato sort of flavor, based on what I'd heard 'em these guys, but they were remarkably more tasty than I imagined they would be. I'll definitely be growing more of these next year.

In addition to this, I also pulled the tomato's in off the deck. They were still green out there, and big, but we're expecting a frost tomorrow, so.. ah. Yank 'em and see what we can do with 'em on the window.

This is a few pics of the Global Bucket project I pulled apart and got a glimpse of inside. What a fantastic growing device this and the Earthbox were. Oh yeah, I also pulled the Earthbox apart and got that cleaned up and packed away for the winter. Check out the root development on this thing as it reached through the perforations in the bottom of the upper bucket:

The upper bucket pulled apart from the lower bucket..

The lower bucket, with some green funk in the bottom..

Closer shot of the roots and the fill pipe..

And I thought this was pretty interesting. The roots came through the perforations in the upper bucket to reach the water in the lower bucket, as we sorta expected, but instead of getting all crazy in here, they just kinda reached for the water and then stopped. The other two containers were all jammed up and mostly root bound.. they just kept reaching for something they weren't going to find.. but this one was smarter. I'm really looking forward to growing the Romas in cages inside these buckets I'll be doing next year. Should grow like a charm in that arrangement.

Lots more to post.. maybe tomorrow. Carry on..