Growing Garlic 🧄 From One Area To The Next

March 31, 2025March 31, 2025 neverfreefarm

As winter waned, and spring approached, I realized a sad thing:

I had either planted or sold all the garlic from summer of 2024. I had none to take with me, to our new place. The worst part is? I had been thru this before, on our last move. I had planted garlic in the fall of 2017 and left in the spring of 2018, taking none with me.

As I packed I found a tiny bulb of garlic. Little slivers for the cloves, but I figured at least I had something to grow.

In early March, I planted it on a visit out East when we drove our RV to West Virginia. I had found an old broken-down wheelbarrow downat the bottom of our land:

Just add in broken pieces of pottery lying next to it for drainage….

I asked a couple of friends, jokingly, “did you have any of the garlic you bought from me, that you didn’t plant?”

Well…my friend Linda actually did.

It was some of the best I had grown last year. Huge bulbs.

I packed it in my suitcase and flew across the US with it, as I left WashingtonState.

The first day in West Virginia, I walked to the “garden” area in the back yard and saw this:

It had sprouted in the 4 weeks since I had planted it. And survived with no watering, except for the rain.

That made me smile. I went shopping and picked up 2 large containers, and planted the rest I had brought.

Now all the garlic I brought is planted.

The garlic won’t grow as big as fall planted, but it will produce seed for next fall, where I can produce a viable crop next year, to keep my Whidbey Red garlic going! And that was all that matters. To keep it going. And hopefully by next spring the new gardens will be built. And ready to grow as much as I want.

~Sarah

Gardening

Spring Slides In

March 26, 2025March 31, 2025 neverfreefarm

I sit here, thinking about the weather in Western Washington State. For a big event is being touted by every meteorologist right now “The skies will fall!”. Sitting on a rock in the Salish Sea, in the Olympic Rainshadow, I’ll sit and wait. Is it winter hollering back one more time? It should be a good one along the Cascade Mountains, but spring is here. The overly excited predictions are hail, rain and tornadoes. I’ll go for rain being the major event. Maybe I’ll be wrong. I hope not.

In a few more weeks, the bad weather will be forgotten as all the trees open, flowers surging. Already the first blossoms 🌸 are almost here. The rhubarb is coming up quickly. Life is returning.

Peach tree 🍑 It’s often the first to bloom. It’ll open next week and hopefully avoid any rain storms.

The Lilac tree might be covered in lichen and moss, but it’s leaves are days from unfurling.

The birds are out singing, even as the weather starts to turn this afternoon. As my time in Washington State winds down, I’m happy to get to see the start of spring, then see it again in West Virgina soon.

~Sarah

Gardening

First Sign Of Spring

March 12, 2025 Sarah

There is something about the end of February as the first green stalks come up from flower bulbs in the Pacific Northwest.

Sometime in early March, the first flowers open, and for the next month, the bulbs continue until the tulips end it.

The wind might be blowing, the rain dumping, but spring is coming.

~Sarah

Gardening · Homesteading · Urban Homesteading

The New Kitchen Garden

March 8, 2025 Sarah

Big news! We are moving soon—across the country. In my work on the new place, I found I couldn’t pass up on at least starting an easy garden. My hands must be in the soil! So while doing work on the new place, I went shopping and got some soil, a few plants, and a couple pots (though I found some on the land that I cleaned up).

In saying goodbye to the homestead on the island and looking forward to the new place we are moving to, I learned one extensive lesson in this last homestead:

It’s OK to take the first year mostly off, learn the land, and go from there.

I nearly burned myself out on the island in the summer of 2018. After leaving behind a well-crafted urban farm, I desperately wanted an established garden. I spent the entire spring and fall frantically trying to get beds in the ground and spending too much money on temporary deer fences.

It’s easy to forget that making that urban farm, like our homestead on the island, took years of hard work.

I cannot forget that I also worked on our homestead for 7 years. It takes time!

If there is one thing that isn’t hard, it is to start a kitchen garden.

It’s a low investment. Our new place has a deck off the living room, baking in the sun. Under it is a brick patio where pots can be put out.

Turning land, building beds, or putting up wildlife fences are unnecessary until we are settled in. Just fill pots, grow bags, plant items, enjoy herbs, and produce them in the first summer and fall. The investment is in a few bags of soil and the containers.

It’s still awhile till spring, so I planted things had been in the cold already.

Two grapes, 2 blueberries and bare root strawberries. I also planted a bulb of garlic I brought with us, to restart my hardneck garlic.

I will move the grapes later, into the ground, but I wanted them to get going, to waken up.

I found an old wheelbarrow, all rusty and unusable. By it, I found broken pottery, so I put them together and made a deep planter to add. Use what you have first before spending money. I planted garlic in it. Again, nothing says I will leave it in there, but it can sit for a few weeks until I have time to build the first beds. The garlic will sprout, and start growing for us.

As spring happens, I will add a lot more on the patio. Lettice, bush peas, and so on. Herb plants. A seat or two, to invite one to hang out and enjoy the views. It will be easy to maintain, and quick to walk out to, to take care of.

~Sarah

Gardening · Homesteading

Seeds To Grow: Mammoth Sunflowers

February 21, 2025 Sarah

Ending this Sunday, the 23rd of February 2025, is the Sow Right Seeds sale! 25% off 10 packets (or more) and free shipping over $25. Use code for 10% off.

Mammoth Sunflowers are a great addition to most gardens, but you must plan for them. They take a lot of room, but if put against a fence, a wall, or at the far end of the gardens, they will fit in.

Plan for 6 to 8 hours of direct sunlight as the sunflowers track the light and change their orientation. This is something cool to point out to children, and it’s a great learning lesson in homeschooling.

They only need uncompacted soil, a little fertilizer, and lots of water. Be sure to turn the soil well before planting. Once grown, the stalks can often be as thick as a woman’s wrist, so they have deep root systems. It is time well spent rocking the land.

Sometimes, they will require staking to hold them up as they finish their growing cycle. (I have found over the years that if not grown in densely planted sections, they can be affected by late summer storms if you have winds where you grow.) You can tie them to fences with jute twine. Do this in multiple sections, to hold it straight up, especially near the head. But leave the twine a bit loose so it doesn’t cut into the stalk.

The Mammoth Sunflowers come in fun-to-grow varieties, such as grey-striped and Russia. Other seed companies will just list them as Mammoth, such as Sow Right Seeds does.

While the seed packets will tell you to direct snow, I highly encourage you to start a number in pots. I have found two issues with direct seeding – birds and squirrels eating or moving the seeds and slugs/squirrels eating the seedlings. So I do both. I seed a row about 3 feet apart; then I start the same amount in pots. I find these do best in the greenhouse, not because of heat, but to keep the squirrels out of the pots.

I plant these between the direct-sown seedlings that make it.

And then there are the random sown ones. We found that chickens love sunflower seeds. I would toss them seeds often; some would wander off and get buried in their scratching. These grew well in the land the chickens would cross: free fertilizer and their little rototillers turning the soil.

There is one thing to watch: what you plant nearby. Sunflower seeds can stop or slow down the growth of other plants, such as tomatoes and lettuce. However, plants like peppers, squash, corn, and beans grow well near them.

Pollinators love sunflowers. Native and honey bees will cover them at the hottest time of the day.

The plants are fun to watch grow tall, over the summer. They can take up to 100 days to fully mature, so are a whole summer project. They often reach 12 feet tall, and can exceed that.

For the past few years, I’ve grown sunflower seeds for our chicken flock. Once the heads were mature and the seeds ripe, I’d pull them out and give them to the girls. They would clean a head quickly. Chickens LOVE sunflower seeds.

I’d save some for later use and some for seed swaps. Homegrown is the best if you like eating them.

Just watch for annoying Instagram influencers trying to take photos in your garden…..they cannot resist a field of blooms as the sun sets!

~Sarah