Pink Garlic!

So, I have a month to month gardening book (see book list) that is filled with useful information such when to cut back roses, when to plant blubs, etc. Only I tend to forget I own it. Good thing my garden actually does a pretty good job of reminding me what to do. For example, last week my poppies and crocus flowers started popping out the ground, announcing the ground was warming up. That prompted me to take a closer look at my nectarine tree- oops time to spray for peach curl and while I'm at it get my veggie beds ready for spring!

The more I garden, the lazier I get. For example, when I first started, I routinely add a bag of mulch to each bed and fertilized my veggies every other week with fish emulsion! I guess you could say I had low soil esteem (ok, that will be the only pun, I promise). Turns out, you can skip a few years of fertilizing and stuff will keep growing. While we're on the topic of my laziness, I have tested my ph balance only once, don't remember what it was and have never worried about it since. That said, I did buy two bags of Fox Farm's Happy Frog Soil Conditioner on a recent trip to Talini's. Tossed in about and inch of the new mulch over the existing soil and mixed it while turning the soil with a shovel. At the same time I pulled out any left over weeds and veggies including one set of carrots....

Basically, I left a few carrots in one corner of the bed to see what they would do... I was hoping they would flower (where do carrot seeds come from?). Instead, they just kept growing, twisting around against one side of the garden to make one frankenstein of a carrot, nearly 20 inches long! (Oh and do you like my new gardening boots that I included for scale? You can still find them at Urbanoutfitters.com in you're so inclined). So, after digging that carrot out, which took a while, adding mulch and turning the soil- I finally get to the title of this blog- pink garlic! It really is pink! And I did learn something new about garlic- there are soft necks and hard necks. Soft neck garlic can be easily braided. Now how's that for ridiculous cuteness, a pink garlic braid!