The Verona Garlic Festival was on Saturday September 3rd, 2011 at the Lions Hall/Frontenac Farmers Market venue west of Verona Ontario. Every year it gets better and this ear was no different. Parking management was much better, eliminating the road clogging should parking. Parking lot layout was great as was the signage.
Lots and lots of everything garlic. Prices were around $8/lb and lots of garlic added products including beer nuts!

It has been a great week so far.

July 25, 2011 Monday, it rained, we needed it. There was a sunrise, and it was raining. Later notes from others said there was a double rainbow.
Came home and did some garden work and prepared for the talk on Tuesday.

While on the phone talking to Sara, a mother deer and a fawn was walking next door in the back field. Its the first time we have seen the deers in awhile. There has been evidence of them being around since the beans on the three sisters plantings are missing. While the mother deer was eating two red fox came out and decided to run around the deer and the tree.

July 26, 2011 Tuesday, I gave a talk at the Oak St Garden on Growing Garlic. Kevin assisted and it was a great time with handouts, hands on demo’s of a full garlic bulb, great audience participation with questions and some field work to show how to harvest the garlic.

We have a La Hoya plant hat has never flowered until this year. We have one flower head on it, with serveral small ones starting. It is beautiful, and the flowers look wax like in appearance. A wonderful smell.

July 27, 2011 Wednesday, we went to Roblin to pick up the CSA share then off to the Napanee Food Bank Garden to weed our rows, 6, 7 (Peas) and 26 (Beans). Well the peas were done , and the beans only needed watering. There were a few weeds but not a lot.

Coming home and going through the gardens, we have found our first ripe tomatoes. These are the red Eros tomatoes midsize and sweet.

We do have some tomatoes with blossom end rot, and and leaves that are showing early blight. These were also noted at the Napanee garden.

Thursday- Went out this morning to see the sunrise and the layer of mist in the meadow, and the crescent moon in clouds.

Later today there is a RASC meeting late in the day, and I look forward to what the rest of the day has to offer.

It is the small things in life that give you greatest pleasure, seize the day and enjoy every moment.

Kim spent another 6 hours early Saturday morning to complete the garlic harvest. Good thing too as we are in for two days of rain today and tomorrow.
Each type of garlic was dug/pulled out and brought over to a worktable where the dirt was cleaned off and a couple of layers were peeled off. They were put into the drying racks and each section was labelled as to type and number.
We have 4 drying racks standing inside a leanto with decent airflow, protection from direct sunlight and rain. Give them a month or so to dry and they will be ready to go for grading to select the seed for the fall planting in October.

Some of the garlic was ready to harvest, showing some of the lower leaves turning brown and dying off.
So we started a little bit of harvest, cleaned them up, and hung them up to dry outdoors in the leanto. This gives them a dry place out of the sun with a good bit of breeze to help them dry slowly (over a month of so).

The plan is to harvest a few types every evening and finishing off perhaps this weekend.
We seem to have so many bulbs this year that a 4th drying stand may have to be built!

Another 4 weeks or so to the garlic harvest. Here is an image from this morning showing the 37 types of garlic and maybe 350-400 plants in total.

The tomatos are coming along. We have tried a new system to tie them up this year. It involves two posts stuck in at either end and sisal string/rope running from end to end and around name stakes, one on either side, supporting the plants. so far we have two courses of two strings each and they seem to be working.

We may need to add one more layer of string in a couple of weeks.

We subscribe to The Garlic News, a small newsletter published by our local garlic guru, Paul Pospisil from Maberly Ontario.
It is availble by paper subscription, usually found at local garlic festivals and at a few organic retailers.
A nice read, especially in the colder months, while we think about the fall planted garlic cloves underground, covered in a bed of straw and a foot or so of snow, just waiting to pop up in the spring.
Canadian price $15 (4 issues=1 year) from The Garlic News, Beaver Pond Estates, 3656 Bolingbroke Road, Maberly, Ontario K0H2B0

Chilifeast 2011 was on Saturday Jan 22nd.
There is nothing like hot steaming bowls of chili on a cold canadian winter weekend…. EXCEPT when it is a bunch of competitive chili cookers all trying to out do each other to win the coveted chili-pepper-pot trophy!
Our own recipe contained no less than 6 cloves of garlic and was not even close to some of the heat coming out of the others.
It is barely over and already plots are afoot for recipe tweaks and additives.

Even though we’ve had more than a dozen if not two dozen nights of frost, it continues to be warm in the area. Weather is nothing if not variable.
The garlic should be getting a good start before the ground freezes solid, which may not happen for another few weeks.
The cold room continues to be doing well, no mice and relatively cool and stable temperatures in the 9-10 deg C range. Much better than inside the house wildly fluctuating between 14 and 24.
This past weekend was one of the best in months. We finely had time to be at home without outside commitments. Having the Saskatchewan Roughriders win the Western Final was an added bonus.
We got caught up on a lot of TV that has been piling up for a few weeks and got to relax.
Kim actually got a chance to do some solar observing through the Coronado Solarmax and a few images of the flares as well.

We finally found a local supplier of straw and purchased a few bales on Saturday and managed to get them out onto the garlic beds Sunday, the object being to help insulate them from bitter cold and wild temperature swings.
The ground is already exhibiting frost heave signs from the shallow soil and cold wet bedrock underneath.
We plan to add another 5-10 yards of dirt to the roughly 500 ft^2 giving it at least another 6″ of depth, sometime in the spring, on the unplanted regions of Veg 4A and 4B, saving enough to do Veg 4C after the garlic harvest.
Speaking of dirt, every new place we try out has been disappointing.
Too many weed seeds, garbage and cigarette butts. So next year we switch again and see how the new guys work out.

The weekend was again sunny and unseasonably warm, so up went the holiday lights, down came a lot of tree branches that needed trimming and in general a good cleanup in preparation for snow.