The garlic is finally all planted, as of today. We planted nearly 600 cloves this year - alot for two people fitting in planting around jobs, weather, and early darkness, but little in the sense of selling market garlic. I also started a nursery bed to experiment with some small-but-potentially nice garlic found growing wild on a roadside, and some bulbils we let mature on the two varieties I’ve grown for about 7 years now. It might take several years of planting, culling, and replanting to see what those can do, but it’s a fun experiment.

Last year I didn’t plant as much as I’d planned on, because the ground froze sometime in October or November when I was counting on planting more, and didn’t really thaw again. (Garlic goes in the ground in the fall, overwinters, then sprouts early in the spring and grows a new bulb ready to harvest in July or August.) But we had a nice amount to sell steadily at the Westside Farmer’s Market from July through the end of September. We saved the best, largest for replanting for next year’s crop. Before planting, we spent a couple hours breaking up bulbs & sorting and counting the best for planting.

The yearly garlic planting ritual here usually involves at least one session of planting in cold blowing wind and rainy drizzle - feeling rushed in case the temperature suddenly drops; this year it’s been much warmer than some past. But the amount of rain we’ve had in the past few weeks ensured coming in from each planting session with gloves, jeans, and boots caked in mud and grime!