Getting ready for another year

I have just come inside after planting garlic. Thanks to my in-laws who agreed to spare us a bit of garlic last minute (I lost count but there were at least 190 usable cloves which is more than double what we planted last year. Possibly 220. I will let you know next July what comes out.) I went online a few weeks ago to see if I could order some garlic for planting and realized that it was way too late, every company had sold out. I planted either Red Russian or Music or a combination of both. They are both really good, tasty garlic, but Music is more resilient according to Chloe.

My nose is still running as I write. It is a cold, cloudy day in early November. Last week we had a lot of rain thanks to Hurricane Sandy who was on her way to oblivion when she passed Montreal. This meant the earth was wet and soft. I decided to wait to plant until the heavy rain was finished as I was not sure what it would do to the garlic. Josh and I spent some time this morning planning out our planting for next year, because we realized that we need to rotate our crops. I have been doing a bit of reading and consulting about rotating crops. My friends Jasmyn and Gu shared a great link which really is crop rotation for dummies.

http://www.todayshomeowner.com/vegetable-garden-crop-rotation-made-easy/#comment-118240

My challenge is that the past two years we did not put any thought into rotation and did not set the garden up well to do this in the future. We got really creative in our set up for next year to put rows in different directions and alternate rows of smaller plants like onions, garlic, basil and carrots in the areas where I had peppers and tomatoes. I needed to have a map before putting in the garlic and carefully mark out where I put the garlic so I can work around it in the spring. Chloe was in town staying at our house for a family Bar Mitzvah this weekend so she was very supportive with her ideas and advice.

Today also marks the first day in four months that I do not have any tomatoes on my tables or counters. This weekend Josh made a fantastic batch of salsa with some of the ripening tomatoes still remaining from the last harvest day on October 12. I have been throwing out the ones that were getting stiff or looking a bit off, and on Friday I dumped a bunch of the remaining green ones in the garbage. I am afraid to compost even the green ones because of our experience last year with forests of tomato sprouts from the compost. Josh also made a small batch of tomato sauce, a lentil dahl,  several litres of Chow chow pickle relish
(http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1836,153178-247202,00.html) and we even tried apple and green tomato crumble, inspired by the Joy of Cooking's apple pie recipe which recommends trying green tomatoes mixed in. We did not tell the kids what was in it. Orianne carefully picked out the tomatoes. Zara and Isaac assumed we left the peel on one of the green apples and ate it with no complaint. It did not detract from the cake, but probably would have been a better texture if we had used green beefsteak tomatoes or another softer, wetter tomato rather than the San Marzano which was a bit rubbery.

The rest of the tomatoes which ripened well have now filled my chest freezer to the top. We have a few bags of green tomato puree for soups but mostly red.

I will finish with a schematic of what we think our garden will look like next year.