harvesting

We've been having stifling hot weather- in the high nineties last week, and yesterday 103! So I don't get much gardening done- go outside first thing in the morning to water, that's about it. By eight am it's already hot enough to break a sweat just walking across my shaded lawn! I'm behind on the weeding and really need to pull all my carrots and turn the compost pile and finish my project of digging out the poison ivy on the back fence. But just thinking about all that in the heat makes me feel so tired. So we stay inside where it's cool.

There are other gardening tasks I can still keep up with. The Garlics had been hanging in my shed long enough I thought,

 so I brought them inside the kitchen to clean. Having dried in the ground a week before pulling and then three more weeks in the shed they were far easier to clean then I remember before. All I had to do was brush off the dirt and an outer layer of dry skin, and trim the dry root clumps.

They look so nice, pearly and lovely!

I won't know for months if they actually cured better than last year's, but already they look better. I wasn't able to braid the necks, though, you have to do that when they're still green. But I prefer the clean look of the bulbs to dirtier ones that are braided.

Also gathered up some Cilantro seed. Two plants had been also hanging to dry in the shed (replaced by eight more just recently) so I brought them in, too.

As you can see there are tons of seed, but they're not all well-formed.

I snipped off each umbrel that had nice-looking seeds, then picked off just the biggest, fattest ones.

Plenty of coriander and seed for Cilantro! I'll grow it all winter in pots and still have lots to plant outside next year. (I am going to put a wall of cilantro around all my cucurbits!)

Outside, the second set of Cilantro that's planted around my Cucumbers is beginning to flower- but they're not nearly as tall as the earlier plants I'm harvesting seed from now. I think because of the heat. The seed I sowed trying to fill in the gaps of that cilantro border never grew- only one sprouted and it withered pretty quickly. So I don't think I'll have any more cilantro plants until perhaps the fall. Going to grow some in pots indoor soon, so we still have a fresh supply in the windowsill.

At the end of all my work with Garlic and Cilantro I used scissors to chop up all the plant residue in my bucket- stems and leaves and too-small seed (all very dry). Then I used it as mulch all around my Zucchini plants. I don't know if I already got all the bugs or the garlic/cilantro scent was a good deterrent, but this morning I could not find a single bug on the plants!