The Urban Farmer’s Almanac

Peppers, tomatoes, and potatoes from the garden.

The garden has been neglected due to a massive home improvement project, but I finally got out and picked everything that was ripe in the hoop house and up front in our meager potato patch (that is all the potatoes we got this year, minus a few I pulled up earlier).

Last October we put some cloves of garlic in the ground and wondered what would happen. They sprouted, endured a massive winter storm, and made it to July, which was my harvest date (that’s what I remember reading in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, anyway.) Alicia was dying to pull it out of the ground, so I finally relented and let her dig it all up. It was pretty amazing… tons of huge heads of garlic; each one grown from a single clove put in the ground 8 months ago.

Like any good farmer’s wife, Alicia decided the next thing to do was braid them together, so now we’ve got enough garlic to last us through the year, looking like a million bucks. Plus, not to get too Ominvore’s Dilemma on you, but a recent pack of garlic we bought was grown in China. Really? This batch should get us through the year, I’d imagine, hopefully with enough to plant next year’s in the fall.