Planting a Years Worth of Garlic

Where were we? After a lengthy time of no posts and lots of gardening-we are back in the blogging world for the fall and winter. Hopefully catching up on this past season's growing notes and what's brewing for the winter month's.

On to fall planting of bulbs!

So we were lucky enough to have a warm fall weather window to plant our garlic! After some intense Arctic Weather in early October, which thankfully did not send the frost too far into the ground, we took 3 days to prep and plant our garlic beds. This is Music-a hardneck variety-in all it's hopefulness for spring.

After eating and canning through our harvest from this season, we decided to plant 10x-yes 10x the amount this fall. Now, to be fair I under-estimated my estimate of planting roughly 200 cloves. But after cracking and popping our 15lbs of Music, Bogatyr, California Soft Neck plus some extra Okanogan Purple from our harvest this year- we ended up with 544 cloves.

Undoubtedly, all would be planted-sore backsides and plenty of wine to mend the pain of it all.

They now occupy four 50ft rows double planted 5 inches apart. We worked around some carrots and parsnips in one bed and seasoned roots of pepper and basil plants in another. The other two beds were previously planted with fava beans (whoo-hoo nitrogen) and 3 types of potatoes-Purple, Yukon Gold and Colorado Rose.

My guess is the previously planted fava bean bed will have the most vigorous bulbs. Beans fix nitrogen in their roots. Once turned under the nitrogen is released into the soil. Come spring we will work in some herbs like sage, basil, bee balm and nettles. Along with calendula and marigolds covering the perimeter.

All beds were turned over by hand with a pitch fork and the pepper/basil bed was lightly hand weeded with very little ground disturbance. This follows our "One Straw Revolution" approach in that we prep beds and grow crops the first season followed every planting after with little to no disturbance of the ground . We simply dig enough soil to plant whatever succession of seeds we are working with. Overtime this should lead to a super nutrient rich growing medium with no weeds.

Straw is used as a mulch for all beds and paths are covered with last seasons flotsam and seed heads. We planted 544 garlic cloves which will hopefully amount to a similar number of bulbs. Garlic is planted in the early fall for northern latitudes and late fall if you are further south. December being the latest for latitudes somewhere below North Carolina.

We plant our cloves with 2 inches of soil over the top or about 3.5 inches deep. We will cover will at least 8 inches of straw once the rain hydrates the first inch of our soil which is expected this week.

The hardneck varieties we are working with this season are Okanogan Purple, Music and Bogatyr. I particularly enjoy hardnecks as they are easier to pop, easier to pull and extremely arctophillic (i made that word up-they love and thrive in the cold).

We also planted 1 soft neck variety this year (148 cloves of California White) as I plan to experiment with braiding next fall. I found the soft neck more difficult to pop and not nearly as plentiful in decent weight usable cloves. Still they will be a nice addition to are hardneck crop.

This is are 3rd season planting and playing with garlic. We have gathered much of our "how to plant" from local farmers, our own experimenting and digging through literature online and in books. All the planning that goes into growing garlic is worth it from the time you place your first clove into a cool shallow grave, to when you unearth a beautiful bulb and savor the rich oils after curing. If you'd like a Garlic Lemonade Recipe check out Sun Loving Baby's Blog.

We are also planting 8 heirloom bulbil varieties. Bulbils are a much longer commitment for growth. Somewhere around 2-3 years I'll have more on how to raise these in a later post. We will be planted half in the fall and the other half in the spring for trial runs. Heirloom Varieties include Fish Lake, Gaia's Garden, Thai and Siberian to name a few. They are from the scape of hardnecks and genetically identical to the mother plant.

So we are exhausted but more aware of what goes into growing and providing food for our subsistence. There is an entirely different relationship with food you grow and food you buy. Planting what we expect to be our intake of 1 year's worth of garlic puts it in perspective for us. Mind, Body and Spirit goes into growing our food. We are grateful for the wonderful weather provided to pull this off.