The onion family

We found some shallots at the Hadley Garden Center this weekend.

After digging two rows four inches apart we laid them all out about 4" from each other. One flat of shallots gave us a lot of plants.

They looked pretty happy to be in the ground.

In my "Crockett's Victory Garden" book, I was reading about growing garlic. He had this to say:

"In most parts of the country garlic does best when it's planted in late fall for harvest the following summer. But in [Victory Garden's] first year we planted it in May and it did quite well ... Planting is simple. I bought my bulbs in a food market, separated each bulb into single cloves, and planted the cloves 4 or 5 inches apart, pushing them into the soil until the pointed tops were just barely covered. By fall each clove produced a large bulb with no more help from me except to keep weeds under contol."

So ... we bought some garlic at the supermarket and decided to give it a shot.

That makes the list of our onion family participants in the garden this year look like this: Walla Walla Onions, shallots, chives (re-sprouted from last year's garden), and garlic. Vampire's beware.

While wandering around the garden we noticed a bunch of little sprigs that looked like grass. Rubbing some between the fingers released the wonderful smell of dill, apparently self-sown from last year's batch.

Along the garden these lilies were growing. We decided to dig them up and move them to this patch of dead grass. Along the center, where the soil is packed down we placed some snapdragon seeds.

The forsythia are in full-bloom along the edge of the property.

We cleared last year's dead growth from the peonies, revealing all these nice new shoots.

On the banking leading down to the garden we spotted these fiddle-head ferns.

And here is the one lonely daffodil that's shown it's face.