Hydrangea, Peas and Garlic

Hydrangea
Originally uploaded by tony4carr
Many gardeners are preparing their gardens for future freezes and letting their gardens sleep in the cold months to come. Not my friends in the Southern Hemisphere of course.

And not me since I live in climate zone 8, where it rarely freezes.

So a few days ago I separated a huge garlic clove in to individual cloves, and planted the cloves pointed side up, in a 3 feet long by 6 inch wide container. The container provides good drainage and prevents our gourmet gophers from eating the tasty garlic.

We especially like the taste of the green leaves which look like chives, and have a light garlic taste. They are delicious in a salad or on a baked potato.

The other planting thing I did was plant Shelling Pea seeds for a hoped for late season crop of peas.

We gardeners live in hope, don't we?

We have room for a small hydrangea and I found a Bombshell Hydrangea in a local nursery. It is smaller than the typical hydrangeas which grow four to five feet tall, and the Bombshell is said to grow two feet tall, or no more than 3 feet tall. I planted it in a chicken wire gopher cage to keep the previously mentioned gophers from chewing up all the roots.

The bush I bought is dormant and because of that doesn't look appealing, and the gal who rang up the sale said "only a real gardener would buy a dormant plant like this one."

I smiled and told her "we gardeners are hopeful people, and I am a Christian, and we are also people of hope."

Garlic and Onions

"We remember the fish, which we did eat in Egypt freely; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions and the garlic." Numbers 11:5-6
Garlic and onions, all members of the Allium genus, were important parts of the human diet as far back as 3200 B.C., and fed the workers who built the pyramids of Egypt.

My friend, Terry, mentioned that she has sets of onions and garlic, and that it will soon be time to plant them, here in California.Wherever you live, as soon as your climate permits, I recommend planting these little culinary workhorses.

Until I planted my own garlic I never knew how delicately flavorful the leaves are in salads or cooking. Delicious, and pretty much the only way to enjoy the leaves is by growing your own garlic.

I haven't tried growing onions and garlic from seed, since the sets are so easy and quick. Set in the dirt, cover with said dirt, and voila: you will be harvesting onions and garlic within a month or two.

photo is from christing-O at creativecommons

garlic
Originally uploaded by christing-O-