Late Harvest

It has been a slow summer in the vegetable garden.  Except for a 2 week period of severe heat, it has been generally cool after a very cold spring.  The tomatoes are only just getting going; some plants do not even have flowers.  I still have no peppers, cucumbers or summer squash and the beans are just beginning to set. 

The cool weather crops are naturally doing better than usual: I just harvested the last of the peas; the fava beans are still cropping; the cabbages, turnips and carrots are sweet.  Last nigh we ate a medley of sauteed peas, tiny beans, carrots and rutabaga - yum!

Opening the Garden

The Boulder Culinary Gardener opens individual members gardens to other gardeners during the summer.  On 1st August it was our turn and after a burst of weeding and house cleaning, about 30 people made the trip up the mountain.

It rained and rained and the temperature dropped down into the 50's!  Still, the hollyhocks made a brave showing, snacks were consumed and I learned more about the amazing resilience of bindweed.

Garlic

I rather overdid planting garlic last year - a full 6' x 4' bed closely planted.  Unfortunately, we took a trip to California just when the garlic was ready for harvest.  By the time we came back, all the stems had shriveled and the cloves were bursting out of their skins.

Digging the garlic without stems is a real pain and with little skins protection, the cloves are unlikely to last into the winter.  On the positive side, the skins simply dropped off and the cloves were extremely easy to peel.  Now we have bags of garlic in the freezer, roast garlic paste in the fridge and a big jar of pickled garlic.  The trug (English garden basket) pictured is  what we have left after giving lots to friends.

The garlic bed is newly seeded with spelt and buckwheat.  By September, it will be ready for winter crops.

San Francisco Indoor Gradening Expo

On the last weekend in July San Francisco hosted the biggest hydroponics and organic gardening show in the country.  This year, Organic Bountea shared a booth with our distributor, Humboldt Wholesale.  With the support of Humboldt Wholesale, Bountea products are now carried by nearly 100 stores across the country.  

Look for stores carrying the full line of our products under STORE LOCATOR on the Bountea website.