Harvesting garlic while tomatoes are coming in

Last October we planted all of our garlic for this year and after growing slowly over winter the garlic has reached its time to be harvested.

This week we are harvesting all the garlic bulbs which require us to use our broadfork to loosen up the soil under the bulbs and then we can remove them.

Every row on the bed needs the broadfork to loosen the soil as it is pretty dry since we stopped watering a few weeks a go.

We harvested a specific area for green garlic and then harvested some of the garlic we planned to save for bulbs as green garlic due to us running out of the other garlic.

Luckily we have some extra garlic for bulbs this year due to the uncertainty of getting any last year that we saved some of our best head of garlic to plant for this year. Fortunately we did end up getting the new garlic cloves, a few weeks later than when we wanted to plant them, but that means we have plenty for this year.

The garlic gets piled in the field and covered to prevent the sunlight from directly damaging it while it cures. The curing period will pull all the water from the garlic cloves enhancing the garlic flavor and making it possible for the bulbs of garlic to be stored for a few months.

Once the garlic is cured we will cut off the stem and roots and sort them into boxes. Some of the bulbs where they are partially damaged we will set aside to be used in the fall for next year’s green garlic.

Fifteen feet from the garlic is our tomatoes and you can clearly see a lot more color on the tomatoes in all the rows the last few of days.

It has been 10 days since we got a pair of days in the triple digits and that seemed to kickstart many more of the green tomatoes to ripen. Luckily the plants have a lot of tomatoes on them so now its all about them ripening.

Ripe sungolds are starting to appear in clumps on the plants and we are having a couple handfuls of heirloom tomatoes be harvested.

The Cherokee Purple tomatoes like to hide within the plants but once they ripen they are easy to spot and are a delicious surprise to have at this time in June.

We have already harvest more early girl tomatoes this week than last week and the amount should continue to increase with the temperature high-80s and low-90s.

Just like the tomatoes that are ripening quickly, the cucumbers are becoming abundant. All three of the varieties we grow are producing lots of fruit and are covered with flowers and baby cucumbers meaning we will have lots more to harvest.

A great way to enjoy the start of summer is with a cucumber and tomato salad. All three of the varieties of cucumbers would be good in it, it just depends on your preference, and the early girl tomatoes will add a great flavor to go with the cucumber.

We also are starting to pick a few shishito peppers this week as they have sized up significantly in the last week. They are perfect to be quickly cooked on the stove or grilled as a snack.