Today was fabulously sunny, so Small Guy and I stopped for lunch at the Kitsilano Farmers Market. We dropped our bikes off at the bike valet and then wandered through the stalls to look at all the veggies and people. The Kitsilano Market has most of the same vendors as the Trout Lake Market, but with far fewer people, so it is easier to see everything and you don’t have to stand in line as often.

My son was looking for his favorite, the Chili Tank, but they weren’t at the market today. I wanted a buckwheat crepe, but there was a huge line up, so we ended up buying food from the Brat-Mobile. We both had a chicken sausages on a bun with caramelized onions and sauerkraut- most excellent.

I stopped at the Master Gardener’s table to ask some advice about my garlic. I harvested and made fabulous pesto sauce from the scapes several weeks ago, but I wanted to know when to harvest the bulbs. The MG suggested: (1) waiting to harvest until the end of July; (2) waiting until a long dry spell to harvest; and (3) brushing off the dirt and drying the bulbs in the garage until September.

We also chatted about rhodos and they said that I should probably deadhead immediately after blooming. Although my rhodos finished blooming almost a month ago, I am still going to continue to deadhead. We also talked about azaleas and chatted about the importance of keeping a gardening journal.

Since I had only a small backpack, I only bought two bunches of red radishes and two bunches of red russian kale (total: $8.50). Although the kale was lacking mojo when I bought it home, after I soaked the bunches in a bowl of water, it has come back to life.

Okay, time to head back into the garden for a few hours. I need to prune the Cornus kousa in the front because it is shading the chrysanthemums. I am going to cut down the aliums but will leave enough of the stem so that I can find the bulbs again in the fall so that I can move them. Most of the alium bulbs split, so now I have a huge number of flowers in a very small area so I want to spread them out more. Also, I need to pick more raspberries and freeze them while they are fresh to make jam later.

Post-script (What really happened). I checked a website that said that dogwoods should only be pruned in the fall. I did cut the aliums, and  left them displayed in a trash can in the back of the yard. And I didn’t freeze any raspberries, I just picked and ate them.