Porch Sitting/Bean Snapping

[Kevin_mc]

Right in the middle of harvesting garlic this past week there appeared a bumper crop of green beans. The garlic is pretty forgiving so we stopped and picked, snapped and put up 40.5 lbs of beans from 150 ft. of row.

We could reach inside the plants and pull out handfulls of 6 inch long beans. I've never seen anything like this.

Needless to say picking all these beans was a good excuse to get some quality time on the porch while we snapped them for freezing.

My wife said she thinks the bumper crop was because I switched from Top Crop to Provider this year. I told her I thought it was because this year we have a new Kubota with a tiller and all the other years we didn't.

What do you guys think?

Kevin

 

[Bird]

Kevin, obviously had to be the new Kubota that made the difference./w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif We started out with a bumper crop early, but then the grasshopper plague arrived and I picked the last of them and mowed down what was left of the vines on June 1./w3tcompact/icons/frown.gif

Bird

 

[MChalkley]

Kevin - I've always wanted to raise garlic (my favorite "vegetable"), but don't have a clue how to start, what kind of soil they need, how hard they are to grow, etc.

Do you raise it to sell, or for personal use? Can you give me a few tips? Thanks!

Mark

 

[Kevin_mc]

Mark, I spent about 5 years looking for a crop that I could use as a commercial crop and garlic fit my lifestyle. It's very forgiving by giving you a window of 2 months to plant and 3-4 weeks to harvest.

A clay soil with a lot of organic material worked in will do fine. Just need to loosen the soil deep.

I call it the holiday plant. In East-Central Missouri we start planting in October around Columbus Day and stop planting by Thanksgiving. Around Christmas we mulch with 4-6" of straw. Around Easter we pull back the mulch, feed it with some compost and put some of the mulch back for weed control. Close to Memorial day we look for scapes to form on the hard neck garlic and cut them off to encourage bulb growth. Beginning on Flag day we hold some of the water and on July 4th we harvest and move the crop into the curing shed.

Depending on the humidity and temperature the garlic will be cured in 2-4 weeks. Some of my garlic keeps well into February. I take the cloves which start to sprout in the basement and dry them to make garlic powder.

If you find garlic you like in the store just plant a few of the cloves in the ground this fall. I understand there are 200 plus varieties of garlic and they are lots of fun to grow. I currently grow both soft and hard neck garlic and a little bit if elephant garlic. We expect to harvest about 250-300 lbs this month.

I save some of my best bulbs for the next falls crop. Will attempt to sell the rest.

Garlic doesn't have many problems with disease and pests, also it appears to keep other pests away from the rest of my garden vegetables.

Hope this helps.

Let me know if you need more information.

Kevin

 

[TomG]

Garlic is sometimes called 'Russian Sulfa.' During WWI, Russian troops didn't have the new sulfa drugs to treat battlefield injuries. They used a folk remedy of applying mashed up garlic in a poultice. It works reasonably well I understand. Bacteria don't like it, and guess it makes sense that it might keep garden pests away as well.

My Ukrainian X believed garlic is beneficial for various infections if taken internally in substantial quantities. I felt like a pest sometimes.

 

[Hawgee]

It sounds good when someone puts up for the winter. Those meals will always taste better than store bought and the memorys. We had such a wet spring I did not even do a pumkin patch for Jamie. I'm guilty. We just don't get a good season here. The one time I tryed horse radish, I planted too deep and it never came up.

"What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered."
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

 

[Kevin_mc]

OK Bird I give. Send in the grasshoppers./w3tcompact/icons/smile.gif I'm done picking beans. Have to much else to do.

Kevin

 

[Kevin_mc]

Tom, Too bad it doesn't do me good by just getting it all over me when I harvest and take it to the curing shed.

Hey, maybe it does. Seems like everybody is complaining about mosquitos but me./w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif

Kevin

 

[Kevin_mc]

We all get those years more often then the bumper crops. Normally I'd be complaining that I was spending all my time moving the hose to water every day. This year it just seems to rain a little every other day. Hawgee, next year it will be your turn.

Your sure correct about them tasting good this winter.

Kevin