2019 veggie gardens

[kobuta (The Original Passionate Cucumber)]

Curiouser and curiouser…

If you read a few posts up from this spring/summer, you’ll know about my garlic disaster. Too much rain water = rotted cloves and some that never got much bigger than the size of about 2 normal cloves of garlic. I thought I had dug up all the bad cloves, but I admittedly wasn’t sure I was going to find them all. The baby cloves that did grow to some extent, I pulled up by end of July/early August.

Much to my surprise, I now have about 3-4 random sprouts of what looks like garlic coming up now. I started seeing this about 2 weeks ago, and I assumed they would just die with a frost that didn’t come. Now, they’re looking pretty robust as if it were middle to late spring. We are possibly getting snow this Friday, so even I don’t think they’ll survive much past this weekend.

So what will happen to them if I just leave them? Will this second life kick the bucket for good and those cloves are for sure dead and buried? Since we normally plant them before a frost anyway, any chance they would just pause and resume with new sprouts in the spring once the thaw sets in (I know the green sprouts aren’t salvageable; just not sure if the clove is still good or not). Any experienced garlic growers who can give me some advice or insight?

[shrinkrap]

I’ve grown garlic for maybe twenty years and I still suck at it. I’ve not done it, but I remember reading about growing “rounds” from really tiny cloves. I’m going to try it this year, since my “bulbs” this year were so small. Can’t be worse than killing them on purpose!

[shrinkrap]

Rocotto peppers!

[biondanonima]

@kobuta

We are possibly getting snow this Friday, so even I don’t think they’ll survive much past this weekend.

They won’t die from the cold - garlic is extremely hardy. The green tops might get a bit of damage but the root system will be just fine. No idea if they will do well in the spring but you might as well leave them and see what happens!

I had a miserable garlic failure this year too, due to excessively wet weather in the spring. I amended my beds heavily with compost and manure this fall and planted 180 cloves of mostly new seed stock - here’s hoping for a better year next year!

[kobuta (The Original Passionate Cucumber)]

We got the arctic cold these last two days so I guess we will find out! I haven’t checked the garden since it’s dark by the time I get home now, but I’d be curious to what’s happening with the garlic cloves this weekend. We had a short spate of unusually warm days at the end of October, and I noticed one of the new cloves I planted in one of my planters was sprouting too. I had put mulch down in an attempt to keep them warm but those darn squirrels again kept digging up the planters! I think my mulch isn’t so much a covering anymore, but just randomly mixed into the soil.

[Lambchop (DeMarko)]

Today was garlic planting day. We grow our own every year and trade stock with my SIL. The huge garlic pictured is some she brought back from Greece last visit. We usually get smaller cloves on our bulbs, which is probably a result of our summers not being hot enough, although we have a longer growing season.

106 cloves planted.

[Elsieb]

Beautiful garlic! Just watched a Netflix video in the Rotten series on global garlic, very interesting.

[Lambchop (DeMarko)]

Why thank you @Elsieb! We’ll check out that garlic show on Netflix.

[shrinkrap]

Very inspiring! I hope to be planting my garlic and shallots next week.

[Lambchop (DeMarko)]

We’ve never done shallots, have you had good luck with yours? We’ve done leeks, green onions, cippolini and Walla Walla sweets with varying degrees of success. Again, probably not hot enough summers.
The green onions however, do very well. Love alliums!

[shrinkrap]

I have the BEST luck with shallots. I try cippolini every year, rarely with good results, but I keep trying. I put seedlings in last week, and will direct seed in pots in January or February.

It is plenty hot here in the summer, and I know that’s not my problem. I think of them as fall/winter here, but they spend a lot of time in the ground.

[Lambchop (DeMarko)]

Thanks, @shrinkrap, we’ll give them a try this year.

[shrinkrap]

Where do you garden? When I’m not using ones I’ve grown, I get them from Grow Organic here in Nor Cal.

[Lambchop (DeMarko)]

In Gig Harbor, Wa, about an hour south of Seattle, gardening zone 8b. I’ll check out the Grow Organic source you mentioned. Thanks!

[biondanonima]

I chopped up all of my remaining hot peppers today and tossed them into a salt water brine to ferment along with an onion, garlic and a sweet bell pepper. If all goes well, in a week I’ll be able to puree this for homemade fermented hot sauce. The rest of my harvest is in the freezer - I should have enough to get through the winter without ever buying another pepper!

[shrinkrap]

I just picked some of the ripe rocotos. Anybody have any ideas for using them? Preferably something that will keep awhile.

[biondanonima]

Aren’t they cute! I have never grown or seen them before - are they hot? Fleshy or thin walls?

[shrinkrap]

Very fleshy and very hot, at least according to most sources.

[biondanonima]

Hm - maybe roast and puree for an aji amarillo type sauce? Would probably need to be frozen to keep much longer than a week.

[shrinkrap]

Good idea. I’ve read about a “paste”.

Here is a recipe for Crema de Rocoto: Spicy Rocoto Pepper Sauce, which calls for a rocotto paste.

Here is a page with both Peruvian Aji Amarillo Sauce & Rocoto Sauce (Chili sauces).

I grew Aji Amarillo, and made a puree that I have in the freezer.

Pickled manzanos

Here’s a hot sauce.

Here’s a relleno using the red ones.

From the last link;

" What’s the Rocoto and what’s its use in Peruvian cuisine?

So let’s warm up to the fascinating world of Rocoto. (I love this hot stuff puns, my bad…). Its technical name is Capsicum Pubescens (something like “Hairy Pepper” because of its hairy leaves). It might be more recognized as a Peruvian pepper, but its origins can be traced all along the Pacific coast of South and Central America. There are different types of Capsicum Pubescens. There are the “Orange” the “Canario” (yellow), the “Rocoto Longo” (from the Canary Islands), the “Rojo” (Red one) and the “Peron” (it looks like a pear). Among other, we can list the Ají Mongo, Chile de Caballo, Turbo Pube, among others.

The Rocoto in Peruvian Restaurants also gets different names depending on who you ask. Ask a Mexican, and they will call it “Chile Manzano” (Apple Pepper). It is also known as “Locoto” in Argentina and Bolivia. Its seeds can be very dark or even black, which is one of its main features. The Rocoto also grows violet/blueish flowers. This Pepper can be found in Peruvian chicken markets, and in Argentinian, Bolivian, Ecuadorian, and Mexican markets as well.

The Rocoto in Peruvian Restaurants is mainly used in the recipes for traditional dishes. Among them, we can find the “Rocoto Relleno,” (we will talk about it later), or the Ceviche. Even when one of its main spicy ingredients is the “Ají Limo,” it’s not unusual to find Rocoto in Ceviche dishes . It can also be found in stews, mixed with onions, garlic, and oil. Peruvian Restaurants like Inka are also known to use Rocoto in salads to accompany several traditional peruvian dishes recipes .

Ooooo! How about candied!

Rocotto vs

Manzano