jaunthie | It's been a good year in the garden so far

The June rose bloom was excellent this year. I made a ton of rose-petal jam, and I think it turned out well.

The snap peas have been coming on in flushes. The peas would like more moisture, but I've been keeping them watered, and we've been eating by the handsfull for several weeks now. (No, we don't cook them. They get eaten fresh out of the garden. If we're being good, they actually make it into the house, instead of being eaten right there in the yard.)

I had some strawberries volunteer in one of my planters and in the rockery, and for once we're actually getting good strawberries off of them (usually the critters get them before we can).

The beans are setting and fruiting like mad. I should have enough mature beans to cook up with dinner in a day or two.

And now the garlic.

I harvested over 100 heads of garlic out of the garden this afternoon. That was just the easy harvest, too; I didn't go extensively digging around, and I'm sure I missed some. (Garlic is like potatoes; plant some once, and you'll have it coming up in the garden forever.) I've got six large braids of regular garlic of mixed varieties, plus one of elephant garlic. And there were at least a dozen bulbs that were unbraidable for various reasons (damage, too hardneck to braid, splitting).

We'll see how well the garlic bulbs cure. I haven't tried storing quite this much garlic before, or working with braids as a curing and storage method. I'm going to be making garlic soup tonight, to use the damaged cloves before they can go bad, but if anyone out there has a favorite garlic-heavy recipe to share, I'd love to see a copy. I definitely have garlic to spare!

Now if the potatoes and beans and onions and pumpkins all produce like the garlic...