Its Time To Get That Garlic In The Ground!

Homegrown garlic is like homegrown tomatoes.  The flavor is so much more intense and complex than what you get from those cellophane wrapped packages (which have often been shipped from overseas) found in the grocery store.  A bonus of growing hardneck varieties of garlic is spring's delicious garlic scapes.    

Garlic went into the ground the other day.  The rule of thumb, the garlic guru from Wooleylot Farm tell me, is to plant around Columbus Day.  

Every spring, when I harvest the previous fall's garlic, I choose the biggest, plumpest bulbs for planting the next year.  As the years pass, I find myself with a larger and more beautiful garlic crop!

This is actually last fall's picture.  Oops, I forgot to bring out my camera!

A few weeks ago, I picked where I would plant the garlic and dumped a whole bunch of grass clippings in a strip in my outside garden.  When I pulled the grass back, I had this beautiful, weed free, worm filled strip of soil in which to plant my garlic.  I put two stakes with a string to mark where I located the garlic.  After I plant, and mulch the garlic, I leave the stakes and string in place so I know where I planted.  I sure would hate to accidentally rototill up my patch in the spring!  

I just came across a temporarily free ebook on How To Plant Your First Garlic Garden. 


P.S. I'm waiting for a family meeting to decide the name of our angel-winged duck.  I have a number of submissions through Facebook and I can't decide!