Fall Garlic Planting

Many frosts have come and gone since the first killing frost of the season and few things are growing out in the garden now.  The only greenery that remains are my brassicas: broccoli, turnips and rutabagas, and my umbels: carrots, parsnips and celery.  I also need to finish digging my potatoes before the really cold weather comes.  In the mean time I am using this break from harvesting to clean up the beds a bit and to prepare them for next year.  I am also thinking ahead to spring planting and deciding what I want to plant and where.

First on the list every year is Garlic.  Garlic is the one thing that I plant in the fall.  It is a very cold tolerant plant and being a bulb, it does best when it is planted after the first frost in an area.  The bulbs will send up shoots when the weather warms in spring and they will be one of the first crops I can harvest in the coming year.  I always choose my largest, healthiest bulbs for planting to ensure that I get good sized heads next year.

I use only the largest cloves off of each head  and this year my tally was 90 cloves planted in a three by ten foot bed.  I like to give garlic some space because the mature plants can really spread their leaves by the end of the season.  I usually try to space them about six inches apart in a grid.

The garlic were planted in the bed that was formerly occupied by a variety of summer squash.  I raked the dead plant matter out of the bed and pulled any weeds that I could find.  I did a rudimentary turning of the soil with a shovel, then mixed in a bag full of leaves with a hoe.  In turning over the garden I came across tons of fat and happy earthworms.  I think my soil is getting healthier every year and the abundance of worms is great evidence of that.

I planted my garlic bulbs a couple of inches deep in this bed and gently back filled the holes.  I laid the irrigation lines back across the bed so they will be available for watering during warm, dry spells.  I will also mulch this bed in with straw to help protect the bulbs from the deep cold of winter.  In a few months, the dark green shoots will emerge from their winter slumber and launch themselves into another growing season.