Planting Garlic
I have had garlic on my mind for almost a year now. The conversation of growing garlic came up at Thanksgiving last year, just a few weeks shy of the last possible planting! (sad trombone) What really got me wanting to grow my own garlic, besides we use so much was a recipe for garlic scape pesto. How brilliant is that???
While I waited for the next growing season (Pittsburgh, PA is Zone 6a), I spent some time reading about garlic. I looked for local garlic suppliers and growers so I could grow a garlic that would work in our area. Fall finally rolled around and I had my eye on garlic from Enon Valley Garlic. Enon Valley has an online purchase option, but I wanted to go to the farmer’s market and see their selection, ask questions etc. Turns out growing garlic is kind of easy.
My daughter and I spent a morning breaking apart three German White and four Romanian Red bulbs. No joke, these hardneck varieties were tough to crack! Eventually we got them all apart by scoring the papery covering between the cloves with our fingernail and prying apart. I don’t know why we didn’t try mashing them like you would a regular head of garlic. Whoops! Result: Fifteen German White cloves, and twenty-five Romanian Red cloves. (We just planted them all.
The Romanian Red is well, red tinged and the German White is the whiter one.
Next we fetched some compost from our pile. Thanks worms for breaking down all the egg shells, coffee, peelings and more! It’s a beautiful cycle from garden to compost to garden to compost!
Planting Garlic
Here’s where I deviate from my normal overly detailed step-by-step DIY.
The previous owners left these beautiful decorative metal edgers and now we use them to mark our garden rows – I guess they are about two-feet wide? I made four rows, like we do for nearly all our plantings, and my daughter and I got to sticking cloves in the ground. How far apart? Well, one hand-width. I put the first clove in the row down, and I would move my hands down the row while she stuck them in – root end down / pointy end up! We left a bit of space between the two varieties so we could tell them apart.
Put some dirt and compost on top so they’re covered by a good 1-1.5″ of soil.
Then we went back and made little mounds to keep them comfortable in the soil.
Finally we covered them with what do you know our HAY – that hay bale gets around! Family party, boo jugs and now in the garden! The mulch is important to keep the temperatures from fluctuating in the winter and to keep the weeds down come spring time. Our garden gets a bit wet, so I covered with with about 2-3″ of hay. Garlic need some winter cold, and you could plant in the spring but your bulbs will not be as big!
And there you go, our garden for the winter! It’s nice to look out the window and think about what’s growing in the dirt there.
Our daughter is excited to use the garlic to make…
Garlic powder? Of all the things!
I am looking forward to garlic hummus, pesto, garlic spreads, garlic bread, garlic pasta, roasted garlic.
What an awesome idea, growing your own garlic! We use a ton of it around here too! You’ll have to post a recipe for your fresh garlic hummus, sounds yummo 🙂