Happy Garlic in the Hoophouse

The garlic that I planted last fall is really starting to take off.  I had to cover it with plastic to protect it from the chickens who have been roaming free in the garden this winter.  At first I just laid the plastic flat over the mulched garlic bed and weighed it down with heavy rocks.  Last month I had noticed that the garlic had begun to sprout and push up through the mulch layer until it was hitting the plastic.  I didn't want to stunt the garlic, so I rearranged the plastic to stretch over my pvc pipe hoops held in place by lengths of rebar pounded into the dirt.  The hoop house has acted as a nice little greenhouse for the garlic and they are very happily growing.  Some are at least 6 inches tall already and it isn't even spring yet!

I am hoping this early heavy growth means that I will be getting many good sized heads of garlic this summer.  I think I planted around 90 garlic bulbs in this three by ten foot bed so the harvest should be plenty to last me through the year.  I am nearly out of last years garlic and still have at least three months to go before I will have some fresh garlic again.  Last years harvest was on the small side because it was the first year it was planted in this type of soil.  It hadn't had time to acclimate yet.  This year I planted the largest bulbs from that crop along with bulbs of some hearty looking locally grown garlic.  From the looks of things so far, the garlic seems very happy and should grow into good sized heads in a few months.  I think I have some hardneck varieties from the locally grown bulbs, so I should also get a small harvest of fresh scapes when they send up their flowering stalk come late spring.

Garlic is such an easy crop to grow that I am surprised that more people don't grow it.  It takes up hardly any room and uses garden space in the off season since it gets planted in fall and harvested in early summer.  This makes it an ideal crop since it is out of the ground soon enough in the season, that I can use the same bed to grow a second fast growing crop in the same season.  It also requires very little moisture or protection (unless you have free ranging chickens) and is completely cold hardy and can survive temperatures well below freezing as long as they are mulched in well.  Not to mention that it adds great flavor to many different types of meals and makes great pickles and salsa.  It is very hard to go wrong with garlic.