A Little Color in the April Garden

A bright blue sky on a sunny and cold April day beckoned me into the garden to see what was growing. Although it's mostly brown around here right now (the forsythia hasn't even started blooming), there are patches of green and other colors from the boldest northern plants.

Here are a few snapshots from my April garden wander: 

Rugosa rose hips spread over a bit of the garden that had been taken over by a gregarious honeysuckle bush that I cut back in the fall.

Looks like I missed a few garlic cloves when I harvested last summer. Oops! It's a good thing, though, because I didn't get around to plant new cloves last fall.

Look at these perfect dandy plants!

Strawberry volunteer. We don't even grow strawberries.

Second flowers are up, after the snowdrops.

These crocuses started to bloom before the latest cold snap, and then the unopened buds sat patiently for over a week, waiting for a sunny day.

This mess of brambles and old grape vines is my next project. I'm going to cut back the vines, rip out the brambles, and hope for the best.

a beautiful birch

Valerian emerging

Pickle That Garlic Before it Goes Bad

Is your garlic looking a little worse for wear this time of year? Garlic bulbs know that spring is right around the corner, and even those stored in a cool, dry place might be starting to sprout, mold, or turn to dust. Before nature turns your precious stash of garlic gold into paper husks, try making these easy refrigerator pickles. That way, you can enjoy fresh garlic through the spring as you wait for the new crop to be ready.

The most time-consuming part of pickling garlic cloves is peeling all of that garlic at once. If you're fast with a knife, you can peel each clove individually. Otherwise, I recommend trying the Martha Stewart method, which is to separate the cloves, put them in a metal bowl, invert another metal bowl on top of the first, and shake the heck out of the cloves. After 10 seconds of shaking, the cloves should slip easily from the peels. I find that this method works better with large cloves, like she uses in the video, and not so well for small home-grown garlic cloves. Try it and see how you fare.

the smallest of our homegrown garlic

Pickled Garlic Ingredients:
garlic cloves
apple cider vinegar

Once the cloves are peeled, fill a glass jar with the garlic. Then pour apple cider vinegar over the cloves, filling the jar. Cover the jar with a non-metallic lid (I use plastic Ball lids). Store pickled garlic in the fridge, or follow the Ball Blue Book recipe to water bath can pickled garlic.

all the tiny cloves are peeled

The cloves can be used immediately, though they keep for at least a year in the fridge, their taste mellowing with time. The vinegar itself is delicious after a few weeks and can be added to salads, cooked greens, or any meal that benefits from a pungent garlic flavored vinegar.

ready to go in the fridge

This is also the method I used to preserve a pint of wild ramps that I was given by a friend last spring. It worked beautifully, and I am still savoring the last of the small bulbs in special meals.