Cabbage Heads, Spinach Seeds, Garlic, and Potatoes

Five of the six cabbages, I got from my neighbor that started them from seed, are doing great.

Here are two of them.  I planted onions around them, but that isn't keeping the cabbage loopers away.  You can see all the holes in the leaves.  I have been going to put tule around them for 2 weeks and still haven't done it.  Tule is like netting, but has smaller holes, is softer, and used for bridal wear.

For now it just came into my brain that I could cover them with the window screens.  I don't care if the onion tops are bent over.  I hate onions!

Here is the spinach that has gone to seed.  I think it is ready to have a paper bag placed over the seeds to save them.  The lettuce behind it will be going to seed soon.  I am out of seeds from both of these plants, so I let a lot of them go to seed.

The garlic is dying without going to flower.  I noted before that it was going great in the winter and then when we got the hot winter spell it started dying.  The ones I have dug are double bulbs/cloves.  You can see them HERE.  I think I will pull these up and plant lettuce and spinach here.  I will have to go buy some seeds this time.

Here is a garlic from last year that must not have grown and came up this year instead.  Can you see the bulge near the top of the plant?  That is the flower developing.  After it comes out and starts to open I will break it off, so that it puts the energy into the garlic bulb and not the flower.  If it is broken off too soon it will come back.

             

This years garlic is weird.  The red spot in the center of the left picture is something popping out of the stock.  The picture on the right has a bulge at the base of the stock.

Garden Update 6-16

This is the lettuce, spinach, carrots and beets from the original planting.  I have planted all but the beets 3 times.  The third time was 6/15.  Harvested right after this picture on 6/9.

Harvested.  Make sure you leave a few leaves in the center of the plant if you want it to keep growing.

Seven days and look at how much has grown back!

Here is a close-up of one of the spinach plants.  It is getting a flower and will soon be going to seed.  I am going to let this one keep growing and will save the seeds from it.

Netted the cabbage yesterday morning.  The bugs should be showing up any day now that it is finally warm.  I used bridal tulle.  It has smaller holes than netting.  It is hard to see because it is green.  I used green, because it was given to me for free.  I secured the tulle under the plants with Velcro plant ties.  Two more left to cover.

Went outside to cover the last two cabbages this afternoon and this is what I found.  Look at all the bugs is just over 24 hours.  This one is next to the 3 in the pictures above.

This another view of the same cabbage.  It is so thick with bugs that I pulled it out of the ground and composted it.

This cabbage is kitty-corner from the others.  It had a few bugs on the bottom row of leaves, so I broke them off and covered the rest of it.

The peas that germinated (about half of them) are growing great.

There are a few pea pods.  They have peas just starting to form in them.

A few more pea pods.

The tomatoes in the tubs are doing good.

Two tomatoes in this tub.

The tomatoes in the ground are not doing very well.  There are 6 of these and this is one of the better ones.  Two are dead.

The strawberry plants are doing good.  The strawberries are tiny.  The rollie pollies AKA sow bugs and/or pill bugs are thick this year.  They are eating the berries.  I had 4 ripe ones and each one had about 1/4 of it eaten and when I picked them up there were 2 to 6 sow bugs in each one.  I lifted all the leaves, runners and berries up on each plant and placed a thick layer of grass clippings under everything over the entire bed.  I am hoping the rollie pollies stay under the grass clippings.