Fall Harvest

I love living here, but there's a few things I miss, like a nice vegetable garden.  Living in an almost-desert at 6,880' elevation and with howling winds, gardening is a challenge.  This year I decided that perhaps an underground vegetable like potatoes would do better than the pitiful tomatoes, etc, I've grown.  Here is my entire fall harvest -

The only thing that grew halfway well for me was an accidental garlic.  Being too cheap to throw a withered old clove away, I shoved it into the veggie bed, and I'll be darn, it grew.  It didn't produce a nice big bulb, but it grew.  So this year I decided to try garlic.  As a long-time reader of The Skoog Farm Journal, I know that garlic is planted in the Fall.  I prepared my garden bed, and off to the local garden supply store I went.  The clerk told me that they didn't have garlic just yet because the soil was too warm for planting, but they would have it Friday.  So back I went Friday, and selected one of each of their hardneck (cold weather) varieties.  And I picked up their handout, "How to Grow Great Garlic", for evening reading.  Imagine my surprise when I read "Plant your garlic cloves in autumn allowing 4-6 weeks of growing before a hard freeze."  What???  We don't have 4-6 weeks of growing before a hard freeze.  We don't have 4-6 days. 

I've planted my garlic, but I don't exactly have hope in my heart for a bountiful harvest.  I'm guessing my garlic harvest will resemble my potato harvest.