Worth the 7 month wait! Red Inchelium garlic!

Red Inchelium garlic - medium sized cloves.

Separated and planted each garlic clove in November of 2008, about 2-3 inches below ground and covered them with a thick (4 inch) leaf cover and pine straw. Harvested them in May of 2009. They need 7 months to lay dormant and then to grow. Great tasting! Harvest just before the stems are about ready to bend over and break so that bacteria and rot do not get into a broken stem.

We washed them with a hose sprayer through a plastic basket and let the water run back into the garden. We layed them out singly on a tray with a kitchen towel under it to absorb the moisture. They dried like this on a covered porch during very rainy weather and did not mildew or mold.

We will use some to replant this fall and of course eat the rest! Wish we had planted 5 times as many!

A tisket, a tasket - a lemon cucumber basket!

These are lemon cucumbers from Renee's Garden seeds. Here in Western North Carolina they were prolific throughout July. Pick them before they are two inches in diameter; at one inch they are crispy and the seeds are soft. Great on sandwiches of cream cheese and cucumber. After two inches in diameter their seeds harden and you need to remove them and there is less flesh to eat.

They get their name from their lemony color, not their taste. They are a mild tasting cucumber - a great addition to any salad, or eat plain. We had literally "hundreds" on 5 plants. They vine everywhere. We wove ours upwards on a homemade bamboo trellis and they thrived, producing fruit as they climbed.