With only a few days left to vacate the first plot, I'd traveled to the old garden to clean out. I took down the locks (yes, I'm aware anyone could have done that) and emptied the garden house. A final current harvest, some trips to the car, and the garden was no longer mine.
Pretty exactly two years after taking over this garden plot, it was time to leave the place. I'm leaving it in better shape but no one is taking over. Nature is already claiming the plot. I'm fine with that. I'm only sad the restored garden house will get neglected. After many trips from the forest garden to the car, I was back on the second plot for more harvests.
The white currant bush was loaded with fruit, so I spent some time with a good book and harvested many of them. I'll miss this bush but branches have been propagated and will come with us to the new garden. And by now, I know what the new garden will be. We are moving into our own house with a large garden this winter. Many of these bushes will move there with us.
I'd only brought very limited tools, so I cut the greenhouse door free with lawn shears. It did the trick. The main goal was to keep these bushes alive and from getting overgrown too much. I watered everything well, so my friend wouldn't need to come by as soon. It was a hot time with little rain. Not everything would survive.
The blueberry bushes survived well but will still not move to the new garden. They are going to my friend. I don't know how I didn't realize this much sooner but the blueberries are the US variety, not the local one. We'll start over with endemic blueberries instead.
I'd hoped to get this plant to seed, as it was very resilient and survived in the greenhouse over winter. I'd harvested the first head, two new ones sprouted. This time, I took the large leaves to cook with. I'd harvest the two heads at my last visit here when picking up the greenhouse. No seeds, unfortunately. But multiple delicious meals!
The day had turned out much longer than planned, and I was drained. There were still quite a few things to load into the car, so I took a break in the shade before continuing.
One of the main reasons for the garden trip had been to find and harvest the garlic and onions. The garden had been neglected since we left last winter, so the beds were not beds at all anymore. Equipped with very suboptimal tools, I dug out what I could find.
The garlic looked great. Considering the total neglect, surprisingly well. The main challenge was finding the garlic between everything else that grew. I couldn't find any of the onions but the garlic looked great. The real work was getting the garlic out between the thick growth of thistles.
In conventional gardening circles, weeding is seen as vital, as the weeds "steal" nutrients from the crop. This plot tells a different story: the garlic that grew between the thistles had the hugest bulbs. As so often, it's not black and white. It was a tough year with essentially no rain for months.
No one was here to water the garlic. No one weeded. But the garlic grew just as well as the year before, better I think. The thistles and other growth here protected the garlic from the harsh sun, kept more moisture in the soil. Sure, the plants compete for nutrients to a degree but they also help each other. More energy is harvested from the sun and moved into plant matter and the soil. And in a natural system, the ground gets covered with what's needed by the soil. We might not like the choice.
This is tough to harvest. I don't recommend garlic in a thistle thicket. But it worked totally fine. If I wanted to keep the garden, I'd chop up these thistles to keep the nutrients but limit the spread. Nudging ecosystems into directions that are slightly more useful to us is how I garden. I don't fight nature. I work with nature and nudge to also provide for me.
I got home just in time for a downpour. Much needed rain this year. The next heatwave would arrive just days later--strong enough to drive nocturnal animals out in search of water.
But back to the evening after the garden trip: time to deal with the large garlic harvest. On the living room floor, I made my way through the harvest. Preparing garlic for storage is very satisfying. You peel dirty layers off and are left with beautiful clean heads.
Hold on. Let me convince the camera to focus. There, that's better. The garlic has a small secondary bulb right above the first one. There are teeny-tiny cloves in there. I don't mind those at all.
I'd also collected some spinach and corn salad seeds. Yes, it's a sock. I didn't even remotely finish sorting the garlic that night, and was back at it the next morning. The small hand shovel had damaged quite a few heads but many looked perfect for storing in braids. Okay, braids might be too kind. Bunches?
I learned all the ways I can mess up the focus on the camera--and how to fix them. Slowly I made my way through the stack and sorted them into three stacks: Heads to be stored intact, cloves to be stored for replanting, and cloves to be eaten up quickly. I worried a lot about storing the individual cloves from the damaged heads. We'd have a garden to plant a few months later. I really didn't want to buy in more seed garlic.
Where the garlic green was fresh, I chopped it up and added it to a pesto. There would have been a lot more garlic green if i'd been faster with the sorting. But it took me days to go through.
I broke up all the damaged heads. At that point, I still had no clue how to store the cloves. Usually, you'd keep as many heads intact as possible, as they store better. But damaged, that wasn't an option.
It had obviously been a year since I'd last braided garlic. I'd forgotten it all. I struggled a lot. I just could not figure out how the braiding worked but also didn't feel like rewatching video tutorials. So, the braids became bunches, essentially. And that's fine. The garlic still looks pretty hanging from the shelf.
Some bulbs weren't well suited for braiding and went into the fridge. The cloves went into a net. I'm happy to report they all stored well. More on that another time.
Join me for more harvests in the garden next time. I'll also share the first kayak adventures.
So long, and thanks for being here.