Another great tiny garden center you should visit, if you're in the Portland OR area, is Pistils Nursery. Very urban and super cute with a nice selection of plants and giftware. They also have a really fab chicken coop and some foul residents...
This boy was not happy about my poking around in his coop! I believe this is a Faverolle...please correct me if I'm wrong. What a beauty.
Super fab coop. Love how they've planted/set plants around the base.
Ok, WOW, was all we could say when we came upon the many greenhouses or gargantuan petunia baskets at Bauman Farms near Portland OR. They grow the biggest petunia baskets I've ever seen! Now, of course, we simply can't pull this off in Dallas, TX. Petunias just have too many grievances with our climate. Just to make it worse, they sell these monsters for...wait for it...$47.95!!! Good Gravy. That's it? Really? What a deal.
If you live near, or swing through Portland OR, Bauman farms is about an hour outside of town, but totally worth the drive. It's a 4th or 5th generation family farm that grows the most fantastic berries. They have a great produce stand, chickens, pygmy goats and garden plants. Too fun!
One of the several "new rages" at the professional trade shows this year are tiny tomatoes. Not tiny fruit necessarily, but tiny plants. Now a few of the ones I've tested for OG Magazine in the last couple of years crashed and burned in our heat. But I'll be curious to see how some of these new hybrids do. Here is one of them:
Tomato 'Sweet & Neat Scarlet'
I'll be gathering a number of these new tomatoes to test in my own garden and the NHG vegetable production garden. But due to timing, I will have to wait until next year to do so. Should be interesting.
Tomato 'Sweet & Neat Scarlet' PC: Leslie F. Halleck
One of my favorite new things I found at OFA the week before last...A funky new African violet that makes these fuzzy little green "flowers". They never open up into a traditional flower with petals. I'm obsessed and It's called 'Neverfloris'.
You can even use it like a flower "frog"...you know the little metal circle of spikes that allow you to hold cult flowers in place. You can use 'Neverfloris' as a base to hold other flowers, decor, little birds, etc. Too cute.
Ok, I know this isn't gardening related, but I just had to put my big sweet kitty Paco to sleep today. He was just the biggest, prettiest, sweetest cat. He was pushing 19 years old in this photo. First my chicken Einstein last week, now Paco. What a week. They were loved!
Sad to say that my little Einstein is being put to sleep this morning.
We spent the last couple of weeks medicating and hand feeding her everyday. While we were in Arkansas for the past week, she stayed with the vet (A & B in Dallas on Garland Road). They took care of her, changed her meds, fed her, etc. Middle of the week they said she'd improved and was starting to eat on her own. But yesterday they called us to say that she just has too much neurological damage to be able to survive on her own. It's just so crazy how a little thing like getting some string wrapped around her leg could turn into a death sentence. We're still baffled as to how she went downhill the way she did. She went from being the spunkiest of the bunch one day, to the sickest and weakest ONE day later. Well, she's been quite the fun little chicken and we're really sad to see her go. Such is life in livestock I suppose. :(
Published: June 19, 2010
Author: Leslie Halleck Categories: Backyard Chickens
If you're in Texas, and you planted garlic cloves cloves last October, now is the time to harvest. Typically, you'll want to stop watering garlic two or three weeks before you harvest it. When is the perfect time to harvest garlic? Well, honestly that comes with a bit of experience. One indicator that you can use, but it's not foolproof, is to harvest once the foliage starts to die back. By mid-May (in Texas) you should start pulling some soil away from the base of the plant to inspect the bulbs. You'll want to see fully formed bulbs with a complete tunic/sheath (push your fingers down into the soil to feel the bulb). Bulbs should not be splitting.
My common garlic, which I harvested yesterday, is just perfect. Really nice sized bulbs with fully formed cloves and a nice sheath. I've got quite a haul this year. Once you harvest your garlic, you'll need to let it "cure" for two or three weeks. After you lift the plants from the ground, wash the soil off the bulbs and the roots, but leave both the roots and the foliage on the plant. You'll want to either hang them in a place that is warm with good air circulation to dry, or spread them out in your garden or on some newspaper to dry. The nutrients in the leaves will move down into the bulb and the sheath will become dry and papery. This helps the bulbs store for much longer periods. Here in Texas, with our intense sun, you're best to dry your bulbs out of direct sunlight or they will scald.
I probably let my Elephant garlic go a little too long - I could have harvested it a week ago. It has now gone to flower. A few of the bulbs have started to split just a little, which just means they won't store as long. But most of them look pretty good.
You'll notice the little offsets attached to the bulb. These are basically baby bulbs. You can pop these off the bulbs and replant them right now for your next crop of garlic next spring. For common garlic (and you can do the same with Elephant garlic) you'll want to pick a couple of bulbs that have nicely formed cloves as your "seeds". After curing, you'll store these bulbs in until fall. Then, you'll split the cloves up and replant each one just like you did this past October. Or, you can eat all your garlic and just buy new seed bulbs!
