Welcome Bruce...I am "up the road" from you in Yukon.

Brad

Welcome! Nice to meet ya.

We're doing similar things here with our land, working gradually towards self-sufficiency. We'll never be "there" but we're working on it.

Diane

I'm in Skiatook, about thirty minutes north of Tulsa. This is my first year gardening here (we moved in last year), but I tried my hand at it a bit in St. Paul, MN before the move. I'm still trying to figure things out. I'm unemployed right now, which gives me plenty of time for gardening, but I'd rather things were different, if you know what I mean. :)

Hi Bruce,

It is so nice to see you here, live and in person (so to speak) on the forum! I really enjoyed reading your introduction to yourself and learning so much about you, your family and what you are doing in terms of gardening, preserving food, etc.

I am so excited that we are going to have another "contributor" here who is growing lots and lots of edible crops. We have many new members this year and many of them are growing veggies and fruit and there always are so many questions related to that. I look forward to seeing your answers to those questions.

And, best of all, it looks like we have a bona fide garlic expert. (Trust me, if you've grown it and it has done well for you, we are going to consider you an expert whether you think of yourself as one, or not!)

It also is wonderful to have another person here who is into preserving the harvest. There are more and more of us every year, and that's a wonderful thing!

Once again, welcome to our online gardening community. In the "perfect world" that I am creating in my head, we all live together on the same stretch of road and run back and forth from one another's yards & gardens & fields, sharing ideas, trouble-shooting problems and admiring one another's plants and harvest. Since it can't be that way in the 'real world', we have this forum as our electronic 'stretch of road'. Pretty cool!

Dawn

Thanks for the nice words everyone.

I definitely don't consider myself an expert when it comes to garlic or gardening. I am pretty much self educated in these areas. I have read books and researched the internet, but most of all I have learned by hard knocks just going out and doing it, failing (sometimes succeeding), and doing it again. Failing at something is a great way to learn what not to do. You never forget it.

Now if you want to talk accounting or finance (BORING) or carpentry or cabinet building then I might be able to lend some expertise. The former my current career that pays the bills and the latter my first career and what got me through college to my second career, and actually my true love and hobby.

I will lend whatever advice I can. I hope to learn as much as I can. We all know what works for one person in a certain area may not work for another person in another area.

As far as garlic goes I have only grown three strains from the Artichoke variety along with a wild strain I found growing on my father-in-law's acreage. The wild strain turned out to be a hardneck variety and after a couple of years of selection grew bulbs on average larger than the other three. They have done well here. A great source of information is Filaree Farms. 'Growing Great Garlic' by Ron Engeland is a fantastic book on garlic culture and history.

Bruce

Here is a link that might be useful: Filaree Farms

Bruce,

I've learned gardening the same way you have, through trial and effort and numerous experiments in trying this and trying that. The key to success, I think, is to never give up and keep trying until you find what works for you in your climate and your soil and your growing conditions. Sometimes, though, it seems like the whole garden is just one big experiment.

I was fortunate to grow up in a family that did a lot of gardening and food preservation, but wish at times I'd paid more attention to what my family members and friends and neighbors did, and why they did it that way. Still, I've managed to muddle my way through it and feel like I've gotten passably good at some parts of it.

We have so much fun here, and we all learn a lot from each other too.

Dawn