Big 'n' Small

Look how big my garlic bulbs are!

 Look how small my garlic crop is!

Not to self - get your act together and plant a decent amount of garlic next season

AND

keep those bloody chooks out of the veggie patch!

Garlic Chicken

I didn't have time to plait my garlic properly because of my sudden trip in December.  It was harvested but I wanted it to dry out a little before I braided it.  Isn't it beautiful!

These are the rejects...broken, small...inferior.

Rejected but not wasted.

Mushed up in the food processor,

bagged up  in 12 portions

and frozen.

One a month will be thawed

and fed to the chickens.

Great for general health

and a natural worm treatment.

See...they love it.

Today I mixed it with some breakfast cereal.

Weetbix and garlic, anyone?

These are the lavender Araucanas.

I think (think!) there are five hens and three roosters.

All of these photos are mainly of one bird

which I think is a rooster.

His tail is longer and droopier.

I think I know someone who would love him.

Araucanas, I have found, make the strangest noises.

They cluck like the other chooks sometimes,

but at other times make a call more like a turkey.

Definitely a bit of a gobble 

and they have deep voices.

The big girls loved their 'medicine' too.

Heather even had her's off the spoon.

Spoiled!

A face only a mother could love?

This post will not go down as a culinary highlight...

to be commented on for days.

The meal wouldn't get me a gig on Master Chef...

and I wouldn't serve it to guests.

Maybe it is a meal only the grower could love.

But I had to share it...cos it is a >90%  meal.

We haven't had many of those since autumn.

(The Great Goat Raids of the Winter of 2011.)

So here it is...

plain and simple and extremely green.

Silver beet and spinach, carrots,

broad bean, green garlic, mint, mash with and feta and olive oil

(ala Suburban Tomato - Liz's looked nicer but this one tasted fine)

and a lightly poached egg from Hortense.

Seven out of eight main ingredients...

I'm claiming that as more than ninety percent home produced.

May there be many more!

Garlic re-calculation

The garlic was beginning to yellow and dry a little.  Some were starting to flower.  It is a couple of weeks earlier than I expected to harvest...but harvest I did...and I harvested, and harvested and harvested!

I was so thrilled with the first few that I pulled, I whipped out the camera.

Then I kept harvesting...

Not a bad haul, hey?

However,  these were just the ones planted around about 

and not in the main garlic bed.

So I kept harvesting.

146!

There were no humungous ones, 

but very few small ones either.

They were all about the size of these ones below...

sort of 'shop size'.

When I planted these, way back on the Autumn Equinox

on March 21st, I wrote a post entitled 'Garlic Maths'.

Out of the 150 cloves I planted, only four didn't prosper.

So here is my updated garlic maths:

146 bulbs x 7* cloves each = 1022 cloves of garlic.

*only an estimate...they may have more cloves.

That's a lot of garlic!

Speaking in Tongs

Kitchen tongs are great for transplanting seedlings.

Their sharp edges easily slide through the soil.

They enable you to pick up the whole plant with soil around the roots.

No handling of the delicate leaves and stems is necessary.

Ordinarily, I wouldn't plant pumpkin seeds early and repot them before putting then out in the garden.  This year I have given it a go.  I will also plant some directly where they will grow.

C'mon boys and girls...this is a race!

From speaking in tongs to speaking broadly...

I have broad beans ...

...and lots of lovely broad bean flowers.

From broad to downright fat!

Check out the girth on this garlic!

I hope the size of the stalk is indicative of the size of the bulbs.

Maybe they have just enjoyed growing their tops.