Garlic Planting Time

It's October and that means it is time to plant garlic.   This is somewhat backward from other vegetables, but it's what works best.  We mulch it over the winter and in the spring it sends shoots up through the mulch.  At that point we let it grow until the beginning of summer when its leaves begin to die, usually in June.  Then, it is time to dig it.

We order most of our garlic from Filaree Garlic Farm.  

http://www.filareefarm.com/

There are many different varieties of garlic and the Filaree web site is very educational.  Most of the garlic you get in the grocery store is "soft-necked" garlic and is rather mild.  However, there are other kinds that are very strong and have quite a "bite".  These strong garlic varieties are very popular with our farmers' market customers.

After we get our order from Filaree, we separate the garlic into cloves.

The variety shown above is named Inchelium Red and some of the cloves are huge!

The cloves are planted 4 inches apart in rows that are 10 to 12 inches apart.  I use a yard stick to determine where to make the holes.

I use a tool called a "dibble" to punch holes in the soil.

Put one clove of garlic in each hole.

Here's what it looked like before I covered the cloves with soil and watered them.

Finally, we mulched it with pine needles that Tom rescued from going to the landfill from someone's house in town.