Henny Penny Farmette

In the Bay Area, September to late October is the optimum time to sow garlic for a spring harvest. Or, you can plant garlic in prepared beds in spring for an autumn harvest.

Get your garlic cloves into garden soil or containers before the first frost to ensure enough time during the rainy winter months for the bulb to grow. Watch for the appearance of its strap-shaped leaves.

Why Grow Garlic?

Garlic is an ancient herb that adds a wonderful pungent complexity to a wide variety of culinary creations. In a kitchen garden, vegetable patch, or potager garden where herbs and vegetables grow alongside berries and fruit trees, garlic works as a beneficial companion plant because its pungent odor acts as repellent for many common garden pests.

Garlic has medical uses, too. In many parts of the world, the herb has been used as treatment for hypertension, bronchial inflammation, fungal skin issues, and high cholesterol. Modern science makes note of garlic compounds as having anti-inflammatory, anti-fungal, and anti-bacterial properties as well as benefiting the immune system.

Choose Softneck or Hardneck Garlic

Garlic falls into two main types: the shorter, softneck variety and the long hardneck type that is often braided. Gardeners can choose from dozen of varieties in each type. Local DIY garden centers or nurseries generally offer garlic during the optimal times for planting it. Notably, elephant garlic, while bearing the name of garlic, is not garlic at all but rather a relative of the leek family whereas true garlic is related to the onion (Allium) family.

Following the following six simple tips can ensure success at growing garlic as a kitchen staple.

1. Plant each clove (pointed side upward, round base downward) in full sun, about 4 inches deep and 4 to 6 inches apart. Space the rows 6 to 8 inches apart. Use well drained-loamy soil to grow your garlic.
2. Grow the garlic in raised beds with soil amended with compost and fertilizer if you have clay soil since clay is unsuitable for growing garlic. The point is to plant this herb in a nutrient-rich, well draining but moisture-retentive soil.
3. Water well when planting; do a weekly watering thereafter. For autumn planting, the Bay Area’s rainy season might provide enough water to keep the herb happy without extra watering through winter, but it’s no guarantee. Drought conditions have prevailed through the rainy season of past years and then there were 17 atmospheric river storms in 2022-2023. Your best bet is to keep checking on the garlic until it is well established.
4. Harvest any garlic scapes, the long, green flowering stems of hard-neck garlic, before they flower. The garlic bulbs will be significantly smaller if the scapes are permitted to flower.
5. Control weeds. If allowed to grow, they can take over your garlic plants.
6. Keep an eye out for pests like dry bulb mites (watch for stunted, twisted leaves and galls indicating that these wormlike pests are present). Other pests include leaf-miners, parasitic wasps, and garlic bloat nematodes (roundworms that feed on the plant, rendering the bulbs soft, brown, and unusable).

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Each year on the first day of autumn here on the Henny Penny Farmette, I take stock of my fruit trees and vegetable and flower gardens.

The Old Farmer’s Almanac points to mid-October 2019 for early rain in Northern California, so there’s much for me to do over the next two or three weeks.

Nothing says “autumn” like ripe pomegranates

My chores list includes the following items. They’re roughly the same from year to year.

1. Gather seeds from self-seeding or heirloom, open-pollinated plants (flowers and vegetables) for next year’s garden. Dry seeds and store them for planting next spring.

Gather seeds from plants such as coreopsis, cosmos, and marigolds for drying for next year’s garden

2. Sow spring-blooming bulbs (such as daffodils, tulips, hyacinths, ranunculus, crocus, and buttercups available in garden centers now).

Siberian scilla adds a lot of color for a small grouping of bulbs

3. Turn soil and prepare beds for the cool-season vegetable garden (broccoli, cabbage, beets, and parsnips).

4. Inspect and divide perennials.

5. Harvest olives and preserve them.

Bartlett late summer pears

6. Pick late summer pears and ripe pomegranates. The leathery covering of pomegranates already may be splitting open and showing ruby red seeds. The juice of the seeds makes a wonderful jelly.

7. Check persimmons for ripeness. Pick if they’re ready. They might need another month.

Hachiya persimmons are delicious when they ripen to softness

8. Harvest and store pumpkins and butternut squash. Peel, remove seeds, and cut the flesh into squares for freezing.

9. Compost old garden vines and vegetable plants that are done bearing for the season. Check tomato plants infected with bacterial or fungal diseases and do NOT add any of these to the compost pile.

10. Begin the process of cleaning and storing gardening items not required over the winter.

11. Sow spring-blooming wildflowers in prepared beds.

12. Schedule time to prune back crop-bearing fruit trees (like apricot, peach, and plum).

I actually look forward to those chores. They’re part of the natural rhythm of farmette life. With a list and plan to get everything done, I won’t be caught by surprise when the weather turns cold, dark, and rainy.

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If you enjoy reading about farming, country living, keeping of bees and chickens, and gardening, check out my Henny Penny Farmette series of cozy mysteries. They’re chocked full of ideas, tips, and delicious recipes for country living.

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There’s nothing to rejuvenate a weary soul like time spent in a garden. Death of one season’s plants yields to new shoots the next. Because I appreciate the ever-evolving nature of a garden, I choose plants, bulbs, bushes, and trees that offer visual interest in each season. Thoughtful planting generates an ever-evolving landscape of color, texture, and visual interest.

Pumpkins show orange and yellow, signalling the arrival of the cool season

The autumn garden has almost completely morphed into a winter landscape now. Pumpkin and tomato vines have been pulled out and perennials in the bee garden  have gone to seed or been cut back. Winter offers little color in the garden except for the cape honeysuckle, white geranium, lavender florets, and early flowering bulbs.

Deciduous trees have mostly lost their leaves, however, the eucalyptus and the pepper trees here on the farmette remain leafy and green. The rains have come and a dusting of snow on nearby mountain peaks is in the forecast ahead. Foliage and blooms are mostly gone. It’s that time of year to cover frost-sensitive plants.

The pomegranates that were ablaze in golden color a few weeks ago have dropped all leaves. What remains is the lovely arching pattern of branches since I’ve trained them from bushes into trees.

Pomegranate leaves  turn gold in the fall

The showy pink flowers over summer of the crape myrtle are a memory. Gone now, too, are the red-gold leaves of fall. What remains is an interesting gray-green bark.

Autumn leaves of the crepe myrtle create a spectacle against the blooming Cecile Brunner rose

The seeds from the giant yellow-orange coreopsis that stood eight feet tall and towered over zinnias, Borage, and rows of lavender have long ago been harvested. Also, my patch of lavender is flourishing. The plants have pushed out long stalks of purple florets.

Dark green shoots of bulbs are pushing up out of the earth where I interplanted them with chrysanthemums. I cut back the mums and they will reappear in the spring to flower again. This is the time of year that shoots of bulbs and rhizomes are birthing daffodils, anemones, tulips, hyacinths, and, to come later, lilies and irises of many colors.

Siberian scilla adds a lot of color for a small grouping of bulbs

In raised beds, shoots of fall-planted onions and garlic are now pushing up. The bees are drawn to the sweet scent of narcissus bulbs that have naturalized after being planted years ago. The Meyer lemon now has lots of yellow thin-skinned fruit and also a few early blooms.

On the dark days and nights of winter, white blooming plants stand in stark contrast to gray wooden fences and leafless trees.  Honor roses, Iceberg roses, and climbing Sally Holmes roses have showy white blooms and may even have some this time of year unless they’ve been cut back. Winter-blooming gardenias and white geraniums have a quiet impact when grouped together in hedges, beds, or containers.

The “Honor” rose is an elegant white blooming rose that is spectacular under moonlight

With so many bulbs and plants available this time of year, putting interest into your winter garden is easy and contributes to an ever-evolving landscape.

Consider plants with gray-green or otherwise pretty foliage and colorful berries. Also plant trees with interesting bark colors, textures, patterns, or scaffolding shapes. When you think of plants for each season of the year, you’ll have a garden to nurture you throughout the year.

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Many Northern California gardens are beginning to awaken in a riot of color from bulbs planted in the fall. Local gardeners will tell you that to achieve lots of color in a spring garden, you can’t beat blooming tulip, daffodil, hyacinth, allium, crocus, anemone, and ranunculus bulbs.

These Kaufmannia tulips make a bold statement wherever they are planted

Buried in the earth, the bulbs are growing and sprouting and colonizing throughout winter. Many bulbs naturalize and spread year over year. One of my favorites is the deep blue Siberian Squill (Scilla siberica). The plant comes from the family of asperagaceae and thrives in Zones 2-8.

Siberian squill adds a lot of color for a small grouping of bulbs

Bright green foliage appears first. Later, tight little buds open atop sturdy, straight stems. Each flower yields a bell-shaped bloom that is roughly one-half inch wide. It is only slightly fragrant. When established, three to five flowers form a stunning blue cluster on a six-inch stalk poking above sword-like foliage.

It’s best to plant these bulbs about six inches apart and three inches deep in early fall. Choose a spot in full sun or part shade. Siberian squill require medium amounts of water. For the greatest impact, do mass plantings under deciduous shrubs and trees or in circles or rows.

Masses of blooming daffodils provide a focus and cheery greeting in a bleak late winter or early spring garden

When planted near yellow daffodils, the rich blue color of the Siberian squill will really pop. These bulbs do not need to be lifted as they will naturalize and colonize over the years. And come spring each year, you will have dramatic color combinations sprouting all around your garden.

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Now that it’s the last week of July, the garlic in my Henny Penny Farmette garden is showing signs of maturation. When the bottom stalk leaves turn brown and dry, it’s an indicator that the bulbs beneath the soil are ready for harvesting.

Onion and garlic are considered kitchen staples all over the world

Garlic is easy to grow, harvest, cure, and store. If you like to cook, you already know how important garlic is as a culinary staple. Since it doesn’t require much space, you can grow it in a large pot or flower box on your patio. It’s well worth your time and effort.

The leaves of a garlic plant sprout from the bottom of the stem upward. The oldest bottom leaves will indicate maturity of the bulbs.

Garlic sends out green shoots as it grows in the spring

Use a fork to carefully loosen soil around the base of each garlic plant. It’s a good idea not to pull from the stems as they might snap. You don’t want to bruise or otherwise damage the garlic bulbs.

Once the plants are harvested, you’ll need to cure them by drying them in a cool, dark place. You could also tie them by their stems in small allotments and hang in protected shed or ventilated closet where the air can circulate around the bulbs.

Cloves of garlic ready to be peeled and prepared for cooking

When the garlic has been cured, remove any remaining soil. Braid the stems to hang the bulbs in your kitchen for easy access when cooking (these braids also make great gifts to friends who cook). Or, leave about 1/2 inch of stem in place before cutting off the rest and storing the garlic in a cool, dark, place.

Softneck Garlic: This type of garlic is preferred for braiding and includes the varieties of Creole, artichoke, and some Asian types of garlic. Softneck garlic grows best where winters are mild and this type of garlic stores for a longer period of time than hardneck types.

Hardneck Garlic: If you want garlic adaptable to cold winter climates and a taste that is closer to wild garlic, this is the type of garlic of choose. It includes the rocambole, purple stripe, and porcelain varieties.

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If you enjoy reading about farmette topics, gardening, and keeping chickens and honeybees, check out my series of cozy mysteries from Kensington Publishing in New York.

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The third novel in the Henny Penny Farmette series is due out in September 2017

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The second novel in the Henny Penny Farmette series

The title of the third novel in my Henny Penny Farmette series suggests loss of bees and murderous intent. No beekeeper wants to lose a hive, regardless of how it happens–whether some invader wants to kill the bees, go after the honey, or use the hive as a host for proliferation of its own species.

A healthy hive box with lid removed

I’m not one-hundred percent positive why I lost a hive this year. My best guess was that the demise was due (not to homicide but rather) to a tiny little pest, possibly a beetle that weakened it so that the bees and queen fled leading to the hive’s demise.

My beekeeper neighbor and I spotted a small beetle and treated for it. My best efforts to keep my small bee house and the area around it clean as well as doing frequent hive inspections wasn’t enough. Now, I’m considering moving my remaining hive onto a higher, drier, sunnier location.

Bee garden in June bloom

I’ll do it at night which is the correct time to move bees. You just put a little strip of packing foam along the hive entrance, gently move the hive, and place it in the new location. Remove the foam strip so the bees can leave at dawn and make sure there’s a water source nearby.

These honeybees will visit a backyard fountain throughout the day

The bees will likely accept the move if there is water and food in the area. I like planting perennial bee gardens and flowers and bulbs with high nectar value for bloom throughout the year.

Since hives can be compromised by wax moths, hive beetles, and other pests (as well as parasites and diseases), frequent inspections to decipher a problem and treat it before it destroys your hive is imperative.

With supers (smaller hive boxes with ten frames each) on the hive in June, the bees will forage on abundant flowers and produce honey that can be taken off in July. That’s also the time to inspect for mites because these populations tend to swell during summer.

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If you’re interested in beekeeping and other farmette topics, check out my Henny Penny Farmette series of mysteries. All are available to order online at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other retailer sites as well as traditional bookstores everywhere.

This third novel in the series will be released Sept. 2017

Autumn in Northern California is one of my favorite times of the year. By November, many of the summer blooms in our flower beds have faded. Seeds have been collected for next year’s blooms. Now’s the time to put in bulbs and tubers for spring, but that doesn’t mean we have no blooms for a Thanksgiving floral arrangement.

Nasturtiums will bloom until frost

These hardy roses bloom profusely right through December

The clocks have been turned back and the rainy season has arrived, but don’t tell that to the roses.

This red-gold polyantha rose will dazzle the eye right up to Christmas

Red-gold roses, pyracantha berries, rustic seed pods, orange- and rust-colored zinnias, asters,  willowleaf cotoneaster, and dahlias are some of the garden plants that combine beautifully in a fall floral arrangement. To the harvest table, I also like to add some seasonal fruits like pomegranates and persimmons.

Zinnias are old favorites spanning generations of family gardens

Thanks to the recent rain, the bougainvillea blazes in shades of fuchsia, orange, red, and purple.  Zinnia’s near the farmette’s bee house are still holding color and hanging on until cold weather arrives.

Pink geraniums are interplanted with white bacopa in the kitchen window box

And while pyracantha (fire thorn) berries add splashes of bright orange to a dark corner of the garden where bamboo towers to ten feet,  the Chinese lantern plant holds aloft dozens of small pink blooms like little lanterns.

Chinese lanterns are easy to grow and look beautiful in almost any corner of the garden

With Thanksgiving three weeks away, I’m feeling confident that our table arrangement will include some of the season’s festive berries, seed pods, and blooming flowers collected from around the farmette.

In the meantime, I’ll notice the splashes of color to be discovered here and there and consider how to use them in a holiday bouquet.

Pretty arching over a trellis or against a wall, bougainvillea is always a  garden standout

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Rose cuttings will become new bushes

The roses, fruit trees, vines, and bushes need pruning, I’ve been itching to get to them, but it’s been raining. Storms have been moving through but with breaks. With rain predicted well into February and March, I don’t think it’s a good idea to put off the pruning. Warm weather will start everything sprouting.

A Level 2 storm moved through today with high winds and rain. I waited until almost lunch time before venturing out. The winds are still fierce, but there are patches of blue in the sky. I filled pots with soil, took cuttings of my roses, dipped them into root hormone, and inserted several in each pot. These will become new bushes for the flower gardens out front of the house.

Brightly colored narcissus bloom when little else shows color in the garden

I love this time of year when the stack of seed catalogs grows daily and nurseries are gearing up for the bare-root season. Already my family is asking when can we plant spring peas, pointing out that the onions and garlic are up and the rhubarb root has set up new leaves.

I did a walk around recently and noticed that with all the rain and warm temperatures, my Desert Gold peach trees and the Bing and Black Tartarian cherries are covered with buds. The buds are swelling but no blossoms yet.

Dwarf nectarine needs to have its limbs pruned back by about one-third

Grass and weeds are up nearly eight inches and growing like crazy. My lavender and the earliest bulbs are blooming. All this lovely growth seems weird after four long years of intense drought.

Even songbirds and honeybees seem happy as they flit around the farmette between the storms. Surely, these signs are harbingers for the glorious spring to come. All the more reason to get busy pruning between these storms.

These fragrant lilies return every year and bloom mid-summer

After the recent rainstorm, I walked around my farmette and noticed small slivers of green sprouting up. They seemed to be everywhere.

I could understand the grass coming back, but the sight of summer-blooming lilies shooting through the soil was quite surprising. The sight of them got me to thinking about planting some bulbs for a springtime bloom.

The bees are drawn to the sweet scent of narcissus that have naturalized in the yard and bloom in the spring

Over the weekend, I dug a bed for some tulips and planted nearly 100 bulbs–some early and others late-blooming.

I also will plant some sweetly fragrant grape hyacinth. The bees are attracted to the pollen because of the scent. Honeybees especially love foraging for pollen on violet-hued tulips.

Honeybees need to find pollen all through the year, so planting bulbs that bloom before the spring wildflowers makes sense for those of us who care about the bees.

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While schools across the nation are taking snow days because of frigid temperatures, the fruit trees on my Bay Area farmette are showing signs of bud swelling and early blossoming because of a winter heat wave.

Cities around the San Francisco Bay are experiencing early January temperatures of 70-plus degrees Fahrenheit, breaking weather records in some areas. Mother Nature certainly behaves strangely at times.

Desert Gold peaches are ready to eat in May but buds are swelling and showing color now

My five-variety apple tree and the early Desert Gold peach trees are covered with buds that are already showing color. I haven’t as yet gotten around to the winter pruning and spraying with organic oil. Maybe if there’s no wind today, I’ll squeeze that chore in with the others.

I did cut back the Washington navel orange that is infected with Leaf Miner, a pest that’s crossed the United States from Florida. It attacks new leaves, so I’m thinking if I prune and spray now before spring is in full swing, maybe I won’t lose this tree. Curiously, the pest hasn’t widely infected my blood orange trees but there are signs of it in the leaves of our Satsuma seedless tangerines.

The dark line inside a tunnel is the frass (feces) trail of the Leaf Miner

Elsewhere, I’ve done deep digging in the chicken run and added some wood chips and leaf material for compost.

The tea roses have been pruned back to 12 to 18 inches and old canes removed. I’m torn between wanting to add more roses in the beds in front of the bamboo plants on the east/west axis of our property or adding more lavender and sunflowers, favored by the bees.

Tomorrow, I’ll open and inspect my bee hives. I left honey stores this past autumn instead of harvesting. But if the bees have gone through all the honey, then I’ll have to add bee food until we get the first early bulb blooms and wildflowers. The French perfume lavender that the bees love is about the only bloom (bee food) in the garden now.  Luckily, I planted a lot of it.

A stalk of French perfume lavender rises out over the rose-scented pelargonium plant

The farm chores don’t just seem endless, they are. But whether the work is daily, weekly, or seasonal, there’s something deeply rewarding–even magical–about living close to the earth in harmony with cycles of seasons and the rhythms of nature. But I admit, it is a little strange to have such warm weather when winter has only just started.