Good News – Bad News

I harvested the garlic a few days ago and it looks great – some of the largest heads I’ve ever grown! A big part of this success is due to the type of garlic I’ve planted. It does very well over cold winters, and we definitely had one of those! But I think cutting the scapes early also helped, and since I now have a wonderful garlic scape pesto recipe, I’m sure I’ll cut the scapes early next year too.

In other good news, the basil has finally started to perk up! In fact, I had to stake one of the basil plants last weekend to keep it from collapsing under the weight of all its new leaves. This is especially good news because Mr. Scoakat found a recipe for a basil potato salad several weeks ago; I’ve wanted to make it but the grocery store we usually shop at doesn’t keep a steady inventory of anything, and they don’t seem to know how to store produce, so we haven’t been able to buy any decent basil. Now, I’ll be able to use basil from the garden, and I’m sure the salad will taste so much better.



The green onions and radishes are also doing well. I harvested some of both and all of the micro greens a few days ago. The carrots aren’t doing as well; only about half of the seeds sprouted.

In news neither good nor bad, I finally got around to removing the purple raspberries that were going nowhere. The red raspberry plants still look great.

And now for the bad news – even the tomato plant in the bucket has blossom end rot. On the bright side, I’ve solved the “soil or roots” mystery. It can’t be the soil; the soil in the raised beds is top soil mixed with (many years of) compost, the soil in the bucket is a garden soil/potting soil mix. So, the problem must be the roots; something is preventing the roots from absorbing nutrients... I guess that’s another mystery to solve.