Live from the Farm: Elephant Garlic

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2. Live from the Farm – Garlic
3. In The Ground: Garlic

Ground cherries are in the tomatillo family — you can see from the picture above the husk covering the actually berry — and they are extremely easy to grow. I bought a plant last year and had an outstanding batch of ground cherries. They are more like a blueberry than a cherry or tomato. They have no pit, they are yellowish orange, and very soft and sweet. They have a vanilla cherry flavor.

Ground cherries are a bush plant growing pretty close to the ground. The cherries drop to the ground when they are ready to eat. Here in lies the problem. When they drop to the ground, someone (a rabbit?) steals them before I can get to them. Last year I came up with the plan to shake the bush a little bit to get the ripe cherries to fall and then pick them up. That way I wasn’t pulling fruit that wasn’t ready to eat and I got to them before the rabbits did.

They keep on producing all summer long until the first frost. Keep picking them and they’ll keep growing.

I let the plant die in it’s spot last fall and to my amazement, a few ground cherry plants regrew this summer. One plant grew about 25 feet away from the original plant — I’m not sure if it was wind blowing the cherry or I dropped a berry that far away.

In any case, I’m looking forward to a robust ground cherry harvest. I should save them all up and make a ground cherry jam, but I have more fun eating them right out in the garden.

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In the harvest is peas, spinach, rocky top lettuce, radishes, and cilantro. Here is what’s going on around the farm:

Lincoln Peas

Pea harvest season is here.  I’m guessing I’ll get about 3 weeks of peas.  The peas are looking real good this week.  A couple of the pods are huge and the are tasty.  The smaller plants actually seem to have more pods on them than the really big plants.  I put down a little extra fertilizer today to keep the growth going.  All of this watering is doing them well.

Tomatoes

I’ll have to do a tomato comparison, but I believe some of the tomato plants grew two feet or more this week.  Two of the plants are approaching four feet today.  Still weeks away from a tomato, they are looking great.  Again, put some fertilizer down to make sure the plants get a solid start before fruiting begins.

Chard

The swiss chard appears to be the only plant in the garden that can’t take the rain.  A few of the chard plants are washed out.  Chard is a fast grower, so I’ll replant next week if they don’t recover (sometimes they do).  Chard likes cooler weather, so I’ll need to replant in the shady section.

Peppers

We have multiple branches now on most of the pepper plants.  I feel like the peppers are growing really slow, but they aren’t do to fruit for a long time.  When compared to the tomatoes, they look like slow moving turtles.  Next month I’ll complain how they are growing too fast, I’m sure.

Radishes

I’ve pulled all of the radishes out of the ground that I’ve planted.  About a 75% success rate — that is, 75% of the seeds I planted, I pulled full radishes out of the ground.  I’ll wait a few weeks and replant some more.  Essentially, you can keep planting radishes all summer.  I take a bit of a break so I can figure out mid-summer spacing and replanting.  Radishes are easy, go anywhere plants — I can put them where ever I have space.

Cucumbers

I’m so happy to say that the cucumbers are in full growth in the garden.  I probably planted too many plants this year, but that should be the least of my problems.  I’m growing a traditional pickling variety and the seeds sprouted and have a great start.

Rocky Top Lettuce

The rocky top lettuce looks like a great variety to grow.  They are growing tightly (which makes for less weeding) and strongly.  I cut four inch leaves today.  They’ll be great for sandwiches.

The rain is really accelerating growth this week.  With the temperature turning from mid 70s to mid 80s this week, I expect some great growth and harvesting next week.

Related articles:

1. On the Farm, June 6, 2009
2. On The Farm, June 26, 2009
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Today I pulled out a number of radishes (they keep coming every day!), a little bit of spinach, and plenty of italian parsley.  I’ll write more about it later, but the parsley over-wintered and dropped seeds all over the place so I’m finding parsley in the oddest locations.  I’m going to trim down and eat most of the errant plants and keep the ones that are growing in a relatively good location.

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1. First Harvest of the Season
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3. A Growing Farm, May 27, 2009

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