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Last year, I harvested my hops in September. That was a little bit late.  They probably should have been harvested mid-August.
This year, I harvested my hops about an hour ago.  It was almost the perfect time to be harvesting them–a whole two months earlier than last year.  Here’s hoping for a second harvest.

The clary sage that I’m growing bloomed this week.  The Homebrewer’s Garden inspired me to grow clary sage.   It’s a biennial plant.  I planted it last year in a pot and transfered it to the ground after the winter.   It hasn’t looked like much until now, just a long stalk with big green leaves, so [...]

Here is the first of what might be several garden posts coming.  This one is about strawberries and I’ll let the pictures do most of the talking.  This first picture was taken on April 5.  It’s a strawberry plant in our garden:

This next picture I took just a couple of minutes ago.  It’s the same [...]

This is the first addition to the garden for the year.  I bought the plants today from the community garden.  It’s called Merlot Lettuce and you can probably tell why from the picture.  They should be ready to eat in about a month and a half.

Now that my hops have all been harvested, I will list all of the varieties that I planted in order of productivity.  This may or may not be a good indication of how well these hops grow in a Dectur, Georgia climate.
1) Centennial
2) Cascade
3) Hallertauer
4) Willamette
5) Chinook (almost nothing)
6) Fuggle (nothing)

Of course, just minutes after that last post, I went out to look at the hops and realized that some of the cones were turning brown and needed harvesting.  I harvested them by lowering the fence sections to the ground and clipping the cones off at that point.  It worked pretty well in that I [...]

I went to the Oakhurst Community Garden yesterday for their spring plant sale. The main sale was today, but there was a member’s preview last night. I was a little hurried last night because a thunderstorm started while I was looking at plants. Still, I’m glad I went last night because, despite heavy rain all [...]

Last weekend, I began taking measures for surviving the hop shortage.  I planted some hop rhizomes around the outside of the house.  Hops are unisexual and only the female hops are used for brewing, so hops are propagated taking root cuttings and planting them in another site.  I ordered my rhizomes through a site called [...]

This past Saturday, I went to a class at the Oakhurst Community Garden on making a rain barrel.  It seemed like a good idea, in time of drought, to have one.  While the outdoor watering ban never included food gardens, it seemed like a good way for us to do our part by collecting water.
The [...]

Today, I picked the last pepper from our garden.  The pepper probably should have been picked a long time ago, but I was hoping it would ripen a little bit.  Here’s a picture of the last pepper.  You can see that it’s still pretty green even though it was beginning to get red.  When I [...]