That's right, I'm stackin it high here! I mean just look at what I have spent the last three days applying to various parts of the garden:
Not gonna lie, as I shoveled out and applied my mostly composted bovine fecal matter bounty, I might have daydreamed about liquifying it a bit and spraying it on some politicians....
Anyway, fun fantasy time aside, a few days ago I noticed my baby corn stalks weren't looking as green as I like in color. There's this depth of green that a properly fed corn stalk attains, so being the amiable homesteader that I am, I had my hubs bring me over a bucket of this winter's cattle paddock offering. The manure has been in a pile for the last couple months, getting turned on occasion, but let me tell ya, there is still some heat in that glorious amendment, a thing that the corn loves.
And sure enough, within just a day or two, I noticed the corn's shade o' green deepened to the color that I like to see. Yay nitrogen! (Or is nitrogen bad now? I can't keep up...sigh)
After bucketing and shoveling my black gold onto the heavy feeding plants (squashes and corn) I also hilled the potatoes a bit and put another application of fish and kelp emulsion on them, the peppers, and the tomatoes. Don't want to too heavily nitrogen those cultivars or I won't get any yield. That's like dropping fresh cow manure on your flip flop. Not fun.
The following morning, before I got my hands (they were gloved, I am not that much of a heathen) in the manure compost, I picked a bowl of snow and sugar snap peas. Tonight's dinner is going to be a buttery, garlicy pile of stir fried pea delight, YUM!
The kale needed picked too, but the thing I was the most excited about was popping the first garlic bulbs out of the ground. The very smallest of the crop was ready, as the scapes were dying back to the proper yellow green shade that indicates it's harvest time.
Just check out the size of my smallest garlic bulbs! SQUEE!
There's a bit of a trick to harvesting garlic. Well, not really a trick, just the way you are supposed to do it. You aren't supposed to pull garlic out of the ground. I use a potato fork and lift it out, clean off the roots, and leave both the roots and scape on the bulb for a bit of a cure-fest. I seriously cannot wait for the two weeks of curing time to elapse. Hello roasted garlic on toast time!!
I also put some manure compost on the hops. The one plant is well over ten feet tall now, and as hops are heavy feeders I thought it was only kind of me to give the plant some nutrient rich food since it is trying so hard to be an over-achiever in the growth department. I am really looking forward to some hops tea this winter!
After making the hops happy, I wandered over to the zucchini plants, and like curcubita magic, there were a few zucchini growing on the plants. I swear they weren't there a couple of days ago. Dangit, I am not ready for a zucchini onslaught yet! I am still catching up with late spring stuff!
And on that note I am going to leave this missive. We had some new arrivals on the farm in the middle of the night (In my close no less, post of cuteness incoming!). There's chorin to do and weeds to pull!
. Keep up the fantastic work