This is the time of the year when lots of prepping starts. We have lots of eggs in the incubator, setting to hatch out of the next 7 days, one hen that’s broody and should hatch out this week, a bunch of fun breeds of chicks coming soon, honey bees that are building up for Spring and vacant garden slots that need tending!

Whew. It’s actually sort of exhausting when I write it out like that, but today’s post is focused on the Garlic/Shallot beds. I’ve found, over the years, that the main onslaught of the mid- to late-Winter onslaught of weeds hits hard towards the end of February. Therefore, I used the last week of January (and, because of usual delays…the first week of February…) to weed out my winter plantings (primarily garlic and shallots these days) and mulch or put a weed prevention down.

The beds all already have a few weeds (the early birds, I suppose) poking through. I was able to get the raised beds weeded today and put some weed prevention down. We’ll see how well it works.

Today, New Years Eve, I actually planted a small row of shallots (French Round) that I had neglected to plant when they arrived in the Fall. To be honest, I thought they were some odd onion bulbs I was experimenting with (I’m still trying to nail down my onion crop). I finally looked them up and discovered they were shallots!

Since I had no room in my raised beds (all mostly garlic, with some shallots), I went to the veggie garden and chose the row where I lay several inches of horse manure out to plan sweet potatoes this past year. I chopped up the ground a bit (it was brutally cold a week ago – like 6 degrees! – but it has been in the 60’s the last couple of days and the ground had mostly thawed,) and planted the small batch. I then covered with a light covering of more horse manure. The final plan will be to put some straw or leaves down on them over the next week.

This is late (by about 2.5 months!), but we’ll see how they do. Worse case, I get some bulbs to try again in the Fall of 2023, when they are supposed to be planted.

In addition to this small planting, I took around 4 of my shallow harvest from last year that I accidentally left out on the counter too long. They began to sprout, so I figured I’d go ahead and plant the things!

I have lots of plans for this year. With the new internet, I’m hoping to record these misadventures right here…

My tomato plants really put out a lot of produce this year – way more than I could eat or process (into canning recipes.) The other problem is that my plants were all gone by mid-September. Back in the day, I would have plants producing green tomatoes right up to frost. I haven’t had that out here in the Gooch yet, so I plan to tweak the process a bit. For next year, I’m going to shoot for 7 feet between stakes and reduce my plantings. I think I had something like 25 plants this year. We can probably get by with 10, but I will reduce my footprint to 20 next year – 2 grapes, 2 cherries, 4 Roma, 8 (or 10) regular. That will leave me with 4 (or 2) late plantings for early July.