The garlic that was not

We met up with Jen and Josh of Seeds in the City yesterday morning for a wonderful brunch at Starlite. They hosted an open yard event in their gorgeous garden a couple of weeks ago, and they were so sweet and generous, that we wanted to have them over to check out our garden too. After our brunch, we headed over to Gidget's Garden.

Jen is a more experienced gardener than I am, and she may like cats even more than I do, so it was fun to see her in our garden and the cats were very welcoming to her, unlike most of our guests.

One of the things I wanted to ask Jen about was the garlic that we planted last Fall.

2 of 8 garlic plants that came up

It did not do well from the very beginning. Our first mistake was that we planted a hardneck variety, rather than one of the softneck varieties, that do better in our warmer climate. These two plants died off quickly but then a third came up, and I was excited about the possibility of garlic this summer.

The box seemed empty with just one garlic plant in it so we went ahead and added some other herbs to it as well.

Front row from left; basil, purple basil, and tri-color sage, back row from left oregano, "garlic", and thyme

A couple of months into growing this gorgeous garlic, Farmer D started to question whether or not it was in fact garlic, or if we were actually cultivating a weed. I was convinced we had garlic, because after all, we did plant garlic and not weeds. He was convinced we had a weed. Farmer D has been threatening to pull it out for quite some time, but I have been telling him no because if it is garlic, it's not ready to come out yet, we'll ruin it.

Farmer D almost pulled it out on Saturday but I talked him into waiting for Jen to give us her opinion. She immediately knew, as Farmer D did, that we had a very healthy weed. Jen was very sweet about breaking the news to me, she shared a similar story about a weed that she had cultivated in her garden, and a master gardener who pointed it out to her, so I did not feel as bad. 

As soon as Jen and Josh left, Farmer D pulled it out of the box.

Removing the "garlic" weed

I was secretly hoping that he was going to pull it out to find immature garlic bulbs but he was right from the beginning. I am sure I will be reminded of this embarrassing moment for years to come..

The weed was extremely healthy, thanks to the EarthBox and FoxFarm fertilizer

Even Gidget is too embarrassed about our mistake to show you her face