Planting Garlic

Planting garlic is similar to planting tulip and daffodil bulbs: push them deep in the soil in the late fall and wait for the magic to happen in the spring.

First make sure the soil is loose, friable, and free of weeds. Add a bit of compost and get ready to plant. I placed my garlic cloves gently on the surface of the soil to get a sense of how closely to space them. Then I pushed my garden knife into the soil the full length of the blade and dropped the garlic down. After all were planted, I covered the bed with a layer of hay and watered.

Garlic is the crop that keeps on giving. Two years ago I visited Seed Savers Exchange in Decorah, Iowa, where I purchased one head of Inchelium Red (softneck) Garlic and one head of Eric's German White (hardneck) Garlic. I planted them in October 2012 and saved my entire harvest the next summer without eating a bite.

In November 2013, I separated the cloves from the heads of garlic and planted again. By July 2014, I had 73 heads of softneck garlic (about 3.75 pounds) and 31 heads of hardneck garlic. From that harvest, I reserved five heads each of hardneck and softneck for replanting. The five heads of hardneck garlic separated into 17 large cloves; the five heads of softneck garlic separated into 62 small cloves.

I learned that garlic slowly adapts to its micro climate, so my garlic is now Red Bucket Farm garlic, specific to my little piece of paradise. Garlic smells fantastic even when planting, and it's not too late to plant this fall. What are you waiting for?

Fall Crops

One of the challenges of urban farming is learning how to keep all the garden beds productive through the fall months.

This morning's harvest was a continuation of late summer crops---tomatoes, beans and elderberries. About two dozen butternut squash remain on the vines. The fall-bearing raspberries ("Heritage Everbearing") are producing heavily, unlike the summer raspberries ("Nova" and "Latham") which produced almost nothing. We're not sure if that is the result of a harsh winter or uninformed pruning.

After harvesting potatoes, onions and garlic in mid-summer, I replanted those beds with bok choy, spinach, Swiss chard, scallions and beets. Most of these were started by seed in the greenhouse and were ready for transplant when the root crops were harvested. This is the tricky part---knowing when to seed so fall crops are ready to transplant to available beds. I've found that sowing fall crop seeds in the greenhouse in early July is helpful, and sowing seeds outdoors in the beds no later than mid-August is most productive. Any later than that, and our daylight is just too limited to get those seeds germinating even if the weather is cooperative.

Now I'm off to the kitchen to process my crops for winter storage.

Harvesting Garlic

Earlier this week I began harvesting garlic. I carefully removed it from the soil and spread it on the drying table in the sun to cure for a week or two. A tarp is handy for cover at night and during potential rainstorms.

Look closely at the photo above. On the left is the regular garlic clove, but on the right you see little bulblets about five inches up the stalk. These little bulbs were growing above ground. None of my usual gardening resources gave me any clue about this, so I did what we all do these days---I googled it. Occasionally a very cold winter will cause garlic to grow above ground. This is evidently some sort of defense mechanism. I will use both the underground and above ground cloves. After all, I've already harvested the garlic scapes earlier this summer. Scapes are seedpods that grow at the end of the leaves and sap energy from the main bulb. I use them in cooking as if they were chives or scallions. They are delicious and quite expensive at the market.

There are three kinds of garlic: softneck garlic, which grows many smaller cloves in one head; hardneck garlic, which grows fewer large cloves; and elephant garlic, which is very big cloves. Softneck garlic is the kind that is usually sold in the grocery store, but hardneck garlic is commonly available at the farmers markets. At Red Bucket Farm we grow Inchelium Red softneck and Eric's German White hardneck.

My hardneck garlic is still in the ground (see photo) and needs to be harvested. No time to blog! Thanks for checking in.