June 11, 2011 - Update

Hello Everyone out there. Here is an update from today.

I finished the herb bed for the garden last night. I have some herbs picked out that I plan on seeding tomorrow. I plan on growing basil, dill, cilantro (coriander), oregano, and some garlic. The garlic should be a little tricky because I am trying something with it. This experiment will go more into the buying stuff at the supermarket and growing it at home. There is a Food Lion close to my house and they had garlic gloves on sale. Because of the way that garlic reproduces, this is something easy to do. If you want fresh garlic for a dish it normally calls for 1 to 2 gloves of garlic. If you buy it fresh at the store, you can unwrap it. Pick the gloves you want for your recipe and then take the remaining gloves, divide them and plant them about 1" deep in soil. The gloves will grow and create their own bulbs underground. When they have grown and the stems have turned and dried, you can dig up the garlic gloves and now you have multiplied what you bought at the store. You can dry these and save them and then plant more to repeat the cycle, until you have enough garlic that your heart is healthy and there will be no vampires within a mile of you (sorry Twilight fans).

I also planted Isaac's tomatoes that he bought last weekend. I moved these to the back of the yard to keep them from cross pollinating with the Better Boys I have in the garden area. Since we have really poor soil at my house, I dug three holes for the plants and then filled them with water. I then filled each hole up with compost and mixed in some of the bad dirt to give it some consistency. I then mixed it all up (with help from Abby and her shovel) and then waited for the water to drain. Once drained I planted the three tomato plants and then put a scoop of composted manure on top. I will have to see how this does in relation to looking ahead to next year as the garden is planned to be expanded some. Jocelyn got a kick out of the tomatoes name and said I should have planted them all the same type. They are called Bradley tomatoes. It is an Heirloom cultivar that was first introduced in 1961 by the University of Arkansas. Supposedly, they are pretty good pink variety. If my compost recipe works, we should know something by the end of July.

Joe Delk