cauliflower and one pathetic garlic scape,
more cauliflower, and
more cauliflower. The other glut has been sugar snaps,
piles of sugar snaps,
and sugar snaps gathered in t-shirts along with a breakfast's worth of strawberries.
There has been huge bunches of spring onions,
They are Purple Monaro. They are looking quite sad in their bed. Their leaves are drying off from the bottom and their tops look like they are yellowing too. They don't seem to be responding to the water I give them from time to time any longer. I put them in at Easter I think, so well before the recommended planting day of the winter solstice. I guess it makes sense then that they'd be ready before the summer solstice?
The only other harvest of quantity has been some radishes.
Finally, this week I harvested my first harvest from my fruit trees - two little mulberries. They are tasty but quite dry. I am thinking that the mulberry needs a lot more water? Or perhaps it's just struggling with it's first produce?
I am contributing this to Daphne's Harvest Monday. Pop over to hers to see other people's harvests.
Fab harvests - I do love a good cauliflower and yours looks sensational. As for the garlic - it looks pretty good. Have all the cloves separated nicely? If the tops are yellowing then its probably about ready. You can leave them in until they die back completely. My dad often does that but I tend to pick mine a bit earlier than he does - ie when the tops are yellowed. Having said that I think Purple Monaro might be a hardneck which is generally ready when the scapes twist downwards I think - I'm sure someone with more experience with growing hardnecks than me will be able to describe it far better than I can.
ReplyDeleteWow, so much cauliflower. I'm jealous! My cauli growing skills still need some working on as my harvests have been pretty meager. Your garlic looks good to me! I'm going to be possibly harvesting mine this weekend if it all looks good. The trick I've been told is when you have yellowed leaves but about 4-5 still green ones that's when you should harvest them. But I don't know if this is for all garlic or hard/soft neck types. Or even if it works at all... The beans look great too.
ReplyDeleteCauliflower is a great glut to have. Your spring onion haul is also mighty impressive. Not sure about the mulberries, but I wouldn't think it would have properly established its root system yet. I think it will improve over time.
ReplyDeleteYour garlic looks just fine! Some of mine are doing weird things - like producing additional bunches of leaves. I pulled one today and it has developed side bulbs. The original leaves haven't even died down. Erk. Not sure what to do - perhaps pull them all and mourn over them like I did the bolting onions. Ah well, such are the joys of veggie growing.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to email you a cauliflower recipe that is too long to reproduce here. I'll send it to Liz as well, as she might like to try it too.
I've been pondering the same question with my garlic. I was really surprised to see it looked ready when I pulled one out, and then more surprised when I unpeeled one clove to discover that it is actually comprised of a heap of cloves, but each quite small. I'm wondering if I leave them a bit longer whether I'll get large heads of garlic at each clove... not much help with your query I'm afraid, but I think the bottom line is if there's enough separation of the cloves to make them useful to cook with without having to waste a heap then I reckon they are good to go! I'm going to pick mine slowly for a while and see what happens with them...
ReplyDeleteLove the idea of picking strawberries by the handful for breakfast, wish I'd got around to planting more!!