This is the healthiest garlic i’ve ever had the pleasure of tending to. It’s now time to watch for the sending of the flower, it curls it’s way up very subtle like- it’s best to snap the flower stalk while still in a bud form, these can be cooked up with other veggies! A way I like to remember it is- if you let the garlic flower- all the energy will go into producing that. If you snap it off, the energy will go back into the root to form the ‘head’. Really it’s a very similar approach as other bulb flowers (if you don’t cut the stalk after the flower, the plant will focus on the seed…).

Once this has been attended to, you wait to watch the upper portion of the plant begin to die back, at this point you stop watering the lot- it likes to be dry for at least two weeks prior to harvest. My friend Chuck let me in on one of his secrets- when all but three leaves of the plant have died back, it is ready to harvest. I have let mine die all the way down in the past, but end up with a thinned skin head. The ‘three leaves’ technique, gives three solid layers over the head. I tried this with the seed garlic he gave me two years ago, and it was perfect. The hardest part of it was to save the healthiest heads for planting last fall- but I’m so glad I did! We have approximately 90 garlic stalks, 4 different varieties. We’ll save a good portion of that for planting this October, while adding a few more that we couldn’t get last year.

Spending a few hours with the garden and my farm community is such amazing food for the soul- there’s really no words to describe it, this feeling. Divine Love.

Inoculated saw dust/wood chip mix from Fungi Perfecti www.fungi.com

Stropharia rugoso annulata (Garden Giants)

We begin by raking away all decaying matter from the area

we transfered the top layer of this ‘matter’ - leaf mold - over to the area we have for the tomatoes, as they like a deep rich mulching for their bed!

Latasha lays out the cardboard…well, what we had on hand- egg cartons from the Wednesday Breakfast.

We then added a layer of wood chips -about 3″ thick.

These next two photos are the spreading of the Mycelium Spores, which was great fun had by all!

We then added another layer of wood chips to cover the spores a bit. We plan on planting corn in with these mushrooms, as we have read that the two are very compatible ‘Mycelium Running’ by Paul Stamets

What a great day!

Thanks to Corey Hau for the great photos!

…horse what! oh, you can do that one, Tim!

…cover that horse manure with straw!

…add some green composted matter…

they finished by all working together! What a day it was.

This was in late February, on May 1st the kids planted scarlet runner beans along the west wall of this bed, and last weekend my Mom and i planted chili peppers and tomatillos along the outer edge. This weekend i’ll plant some seeds- soy beans, i think…