Elephant Garlic

A photo of the Elephant Garlic that I am trying to increase. I received some bulbs from a friend's father-in-law who grew lots of this garlic in Crescent City. That was in 1996, and the bulbs were really meant for eating. But I tossed a few in my father's yard where they have put up interesting flowers every year, but not much garlic. When I bought my land here, I took couple of bulbs back, and have been growing them to increase their numbers. I'm not ready to eat them until I have enough for a good crop each year. But I have gone from 2 bulbs to 7 and I'm hoping I'll get a few this year to add to my cooking.

When I've had good productive days in the garden, I hardly mind coming to work on a Monday. The only kicker is that when I'm leaving, and the weather is as gorgeous as it has been the last few days, it's hard to turn left to the car instead of right into the garden. Well, maybe some showers will keep me on track, it looks like there are showers coming in the forecast by Wednesday.

I removed the weeds from around the pear tree, I still haven't gotten them under control, but there are less and less every year. I also removed last year's mulch. There was a lot of fungus growing on the wood chips and I opted to remove all of the mulch for now. I'm preparing to do the annual pruning. I also want to prune the "assumed apricot". I'm assuming it's an apricot as a friend and fellow Master Gardener identified it as such, however, I've never seen any fruit. It does bloom beautifully each spring and part of my fruit tree work this year is adding a couple of grafts from another low chill, self fruitful apricot, to see if this changes anything.

A co-worker mentioned that her father bought cherry trees, from San Lorenzo, she assumed. But I was told they would remain in quarantine until this week. I hope he bought them somewhere else or just reserved the trees, as I will be sorely disappointed if they started selling this weekend. It would mean many of the trees will already be sold out.