I love to garden. Not flowers...I know nothing about flowers. I love vegetable gardening. I love the feeling of having food available that I produced. Canning, freezing, and eating. I think it's all fantastic.
The garden is my place of solitude. I started my first vegetable garden 13 years ago when my oldest child was just a baby. It was a place I could go to when the children went to sleep. As the children get older, they will sometimes come help with a little bit of the planting or come to get a fresh vegetable snack, but for the most part I'm alone with my own thoughts while in the garden.
I spend a lot of time tending to vegetables. Early every March I take over the southern exposed windows of the house. My office and great room are turned into greenhouses. For months I will tend to hundreds of tiny little seedlings in hopes they will grow big and strong before the beginning of June. Once the frost has left, I'll spend a few days clearing pathways in the garden and setting up rows where my young seedlings will soon be planted along with some more seeds.
At this point in the season there is one special plant that is already poking its way out of the garden. The garlic is already on its way with its first harvest coming in early July. The scapes harvest is a wonderful bonus that we get from the garlic plant. Not only is it essential that we harvest them to allow the bulbs to grow larger, but they are also a wonderful treat in the kitchen. I'll leave that information for another post though.
I've learned so much about garlic and am really excited to share this information with all of you.