Eclipse Harvest

Last Sunday, May 20, 2012, I was out in the garden harvesting the last of the Winter vegetables from last year.  This Garlic has been in the ground since October of last year.  You can tell when it gets too hot for Garlic here when the tops fall over and start turning brown.

You can store them, and plant them again in the Fall, or you can use them.  Each of these Garlic Heads was planted as a single clove.  The Turnips that I planted this year are overcrowded, so I needed to thin out this bed.

Turnip leaves are delicate, and break easy.  Gotta be really careful to get the leaves you don't want to break out of the way before you start pulling Turnips.  I pulled the largest one, and what I needed to pull to thin the bed.

The Cilantro bolts in mid Spring, and goes to seed.  I'll take the whole plant, and hang them upside down on the fence to dehydrate.  Then I'll go back later and harvest the Coriander, an unbelievable supply of Coriander.

I also had a number of Carrots, some which have gone to seed.  When a Carrot produces its flower the root turns "woody" and it is hard to chew.  So those get used for seed rather than their root.

This is the bed that had all the Vegetable Flowers.  Now that I have harvested all those vegetables I need to till the bed, mix in some new compost, and replant it for this year.  I haven't decided what to plant in there yet.  There are still a couple of Cilantro plants which are covered in flowers in the bed, and I'll harvest those once the seeds have developed.

The Cultivator, or Tiller that I am using is called a Tyne.  Well, a more proper description would be a Rotary, Cross Hatching Tyne.  It works really well in my organic beds that I have been working for years, but it doesn't like the native clay soil.  My organic beds have some of that clay soil in them, but they are augmented with generous quantities of organic matter.