Planting Garlic

Garlic is something that we cook with a lot.  We absolutely love the flavor.  We've grown it for several years and have almost perfected growing it, but we continue to have problems with storing it due to the high humidity during the time of the harvest.  Our yield is very good, but we lose an awful lot of our garlic while trying to dry it.

We have tried to put the garlic we harvest on top of fans that continually blow air over it, but when you are blowing hot, humid air, it has little advantageous effects on drying it.  We have brought them indoors right after harvest into a less humid environment, but still have a high loss rate. But we'll keep on trying and I'll be reading lots of information and will be ready for next summer when we harvest the garlic crop we are about to put in the ground.

Tricia purchased six garlic bulbs at the local feed store.  We grow softneck garlic in the South and although they weren't labeled at the feed store, I think this is known as the Creole variety.

"Seed" Garlic

I broke up the garlic bulbs by separating the individual cloves that make up the bulbs.  There were a few bad cloves, but when all of them were separated, I had 80 individual cloves, which equates to about 13 cloves per bulb.  Some were big and some were small, but I've found that most all of them will sprout and eventually grow into a garlic bulb.  According to what I've read, you need to plant them in the Fall so that you are assured of two months of cool weather growth that stimulates 'bulbing.'

Separating out the cloves

I normally plant garlic 4 inches apart, so I made a little guide for Benjamin using a big tent peg by marking four inch increments and using it as a planting guide.  This will keep the planting uniform and accurately spaced.  I had previously worked in a little composted chicken manure into the soil to assist in making the garlic jump out of the ground.

Homemade Planting Guide

We dug slight indentations one inch deep and placed each garlic clove in the hole, pointy side facing up, and covered the garlic so that the very tip was just covered with dirt.

Planting Garlic

Here is a view of part of the garlic row all planted with the cloves in the hole.  We planted them in rows of three.  I like them planted like this because you can straddle the row when harvesting them.

All the cloves are planted

Benjamin followed as I dug the holes with a knife and dropped the cloves in each hole and then he brushed dirt over them to cover them up.  In no time, we were done. 

Sometimes you just have to get your hands dirty

A day after we planted, I drug the water hose across the pasture and thoroughly watered the garlic row, hoping to imitate a good rainfall.  It has been pretty dry in October.  As the garlic grows, I'll mulch heavily between the growth with hay to discourage weed growth that competes with the garlic for soil nutrients.

Now that the garlic is planted, I have 7 or 8 months to read up and learn on how to store garlic better! This year we will hopefully have better results in garlic storage.