The annual Garlic planting was done on
Oct14, 2005.
While not the most
photogenic subject, I thought it might be worth chronicling.
I
tore apart quite a number of garlic heads to have the cloves ready to
plant.
There
were 175 cloves in this container of hard neck; not quite all of these
were planted. The soft-neck variety had around 90 cloves planted. The
giant variety had about 20 cloves. These numbers seem to ensure we have
a year-round supply of home-grown garlic.
The area had been previously covered by a
crop of late buckwheat .
........... which was dug in leaving a
readied patch.
There were several rows of both Hard-neck
and Soft-neck varieties.
The cloves were planted in a slight
trench, 4-6 inches apart...
The rows are covered with soil and tamped
down firmly with the back of
a garden rake...
.... each row is labeled on the ends.
In addition to the regular planted cloves,
we usually add a few patches
of 'seed' garlic harvested from the bulblets formed on the scapes of
the hard neck varieties.....
These tiny ones actually came from the
scape on a variety of 'giant'
garlic given to us by a friend a couple of years ago. Each head is
composed of only 4 very large cloves. We will see what comes of these
'seeds'.
These little guys were planted in a
few short rows quite close
together.....
Another garlic source always seems to be
the miscellaneous strays that
have escaped harvest or were little and ignored at harvest. By fall
many of these have put up new shoots and a bunch were unearthed,
literally, when the patch was turned over......
Not wanting to 'waste' this bit of effort,
some were torn apart and
replanted in a row much as one would do with leek or onion seedlings.
The row was covered with just a bit of the
green sticking up.
The
patch is now completely planted and will only need a covering of
old manure mulch before winter.
