Friday 25 June 2010

Garlic and strawberries not quite bread and butter

I have pulled my garlic up this evening. The cloves are not as large as  I would have liked them to be and I am slightly disappointed. I will select the largest and best and plant them again shortly. I have no idea what the variety is. Got them from the supermarket a couple of years ago, last year they got much larger than this. This year though they went in quite late


The Golden Delicious apple tree has had the small apples removed because it is the first year (it was bare rooted not so long ago). I know it is the right thing to do, but still a killer removing around 8 very small apples. Thanks Reg for the encouragement. I needed it



Committed the first serious raid on the strawberry patch this evening to. These are whats left after me and our lass had a strawberry ice cream milkshake and some. They are delicious. I have been nibbling at the odd strawberry in the patch now for days. The ones in the front garden got ripe first and the birds dont bother them as I believe it is near the road




Weather report - Really hot and but slightly over cast all day ,Wakefield, England . The word gorgeous would still describe it well



17 comments:

  1. hahaha, O it hurt me to do mine a few days ago, It just did not want to do it. But it must be done. My tree was not bare root, still way to hard on the tree to have to produce this way on the first year. I just reminded myself that the root system needs to strong in order to have good fruit later.
    By the way nice surgery on your tree there good Doctor!!!!!!

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  2. It wasnt many apples but it pained me to remove them. As for surgery. I am more Dr Death than Dr Kildare

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  3. Even though your cloves are not the size you wished them to be, please be aware that there is someone out there always envying what the other has. For example - I am so jealous of your garlic. Why? because mine were the size of a marble.

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  4. LMAO. thanks Mangocheeks., that does put it in to perspective for me. You are right of course. I am happy with them. They are in the greenhouse hung up drying at the mo. I am going to split them up and put some in the fridge to instigate growing then plant some out again but I am going to plant them in a different spot I think this year.

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  5. This funny ten years back I planted garlic from the grocery store. Then I found out they come from Mexico. They never get bigger than marbles!!!!. Anyway I planted them for bug control for my Roses. It did not work actually all that well. Now I have tons of it. Canada has a variety that grow huge. Who was to know. That said I have yet to pull all these Mexicans and plant Canadian!!~!!!!!

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  6. I have heard garlic is good for roses and putting aphids off, but clearly from personal experience you dont agree Reg. This year year touch would I have not had many aphids but did plant garlic. but last year I planted garlic and I had loads of aphids. I think this year the really cold weather helped an awful lot for me. Is the Canadian variety called Elephant garlic or some thing similar?

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  7. yes there is a Variety called Elephant and as far as I can tell it is referred to as a Canadian variety, but also considered as being mild. We can by them here, I just never have. O I do use that Mexican garlic for cooking it just does not look like what you would see in the store

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  8. I have nevered tried the elephant garlic. If I have garlic I want it as smelly as it comes ;-) As a kid I never would eat anything "foreign" but I think garlic bread did it for me and now I will happily eat lots of it in anything. what is Mexican garlic though? I have not heard of that

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  9. It is a variety that grows in warmer and drier climate. I used the term Mexican as they are shipped here from Mexico. What type they are I really do not know. But they are strong and smelly!!!!!!

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  10. LOL... strong and smelly sounds good to me Reg. I have no idea what variety mine are but they grew very well last year. I will pick the best out and plant them for next year.

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  11. sounds good to me as well. I am missing your entries as of late. I suspect like here mid summer slows things down a bit

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  12. I need to put up a new entry on my veg, mostly disappointing as we have had here the hottest week in Canadian History and things just went from okay to disaster. With Humidity we actually hit 50 0 C three days in a row. The temps with out that Humidity was still into the low 40's o C man was it hot here.

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  13. You seem to be having weather similar to ours but I dont think we quite got that hot or that humid either. sorry to hear the veg are not doing as well as expected either, that is a shame and I hope they pull back for you. There is also plenty to blog about in the garden. but this last couple of weeks I have been so busy, it has been really hot so I have been out and about. bee keeping is keeping me busy. I have got my hive back and it is up and running very nicely. I also have had another hive outside and it became occupied by a honey bee swarm which was a very very nice surprise (so I now have 2 hives with bees in. To top things off last night the girlfriends exhaust fell off her micra, so today I picked a new one up and fitted it tonight. I now look like I have been down a mine because although it took 10minutes to fit, it took 2hours to take the old one off. but hey ho. it is all good fun. the rasps are doing great. the strawberries are nearly over but I am still getting some, the apples are growing really big , the plums are so so, but I am still happy with them. the garlic has dried nicely too and my kiwis plants are growing quite a lot to.

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  14. Way to funny about the down the Mine, I am no mechanic and I can get really dirty in the process. More so what takes one guy a hour takes me the day!!!!
    That is so cool about the second hive. I hope that you are having great luck with it. By now I guess you have that all going for you.
    My fruit trees are doing very well this year better than I had hoped. So at least not every thing went down for me this year.
    The heat has been way over the top and I have not done much with the garden actually. Still I can get nice pics of single items witch gives the impression of a great garden doing well at least on the Blog.
    I posted this evening a piece about Japanese beetles and what they can do in a few hours in a garden. I hope you do not have them there. They are so destructive.
    Looking for ward to your next post have a great one.

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  15. I tell you. those 2 hours killed me!!! I can relate to that taking a lot longer. but I enjoy it and it saves me cash, so win win situation for me.

    I am fingers crossed with the bees. they are good so far but my next target is to get at least one hive alive through winter. thats the aim.

    Still busy in the garden. although not posting much (have just posted a new one now though) I do exactly the same. I post what I like but some times if you look at the bigger picture some times it is a mess. thats gardening I suppose.

    I dont think we have japanese beetle and by the sounds of it, thats a good thing. I have all on with sligs, they are annoying and eating my strawbs!!! the swines.

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  16. I have slugs but they are under control, and are of little concern to me. They where a huge problem for me when I actually did the chemical war thing with them. I could not win. Now nature does a great job for me and it is free!!!!

    The Japanese Beetle is not a native to Canada and is not on the menu for most birds, or predators here so they have a free reign.

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  17. I suppose I am similar with the slugs. I dont put any control down and leave nature to do its course. and nature does quite a good job. Occasionally I put a beer trap down for them if they are getting a little to annoying.

    I read your blog entry on them and the pictures of the roses were horrendous. I was amazing at the damage they did in such a short time frame. I hope we dont get them here, call me cynical though, I am sure they will arrive in time though.

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