11 February 2017

Garlic in winter

Photo of a few short rows of young garlic plants
Garlic and detritus, Feb 2017
It's nice that the garden book I'm following for this project, The Complete Guide to Self Sufficiency by John Seymour, has a season-by-season calendar of Things to Do;  I knew to plant my garlic in October so that it would be ready for harvest next July.  I also knew to plant it in the Roots 2017 bed, giving me a way to judge where it should go and how much room I should leave.

This bed was Misc last year, but I've kind of shuffled boundaries around to accommodate one more bed (Potatoes, which I didn't grow last year), so it also takes up a bit of what was the holding bed in 2016, too.  Next to the garlic is the shallots (a few have sprouted, but are smaller than the garlic.  There isn't a lot of room left in the Roots bed, but I'll put parsnips and beets there a little later--here's hoping these  ones evade the slugs.

My little rows hold four plants across, planted about 2-4 inches apart.  I planted adjacent bulbs so that they're staggered;  going vertically down the row the bulbs are in a straight line, but going horizontally they're in a zig zag.  This means I can cram more bulbs in this small section.  I actually planted two batches;  the more prominent batch came from the produce section of the grocery store and the smaller plants to the left were leftover from my own harvest last year.  I planted the storebought ones about a month before my own saved ones, which I think accounts for the difference in size.

Incidently, I have a couple more volunteer garlic plants resprouting where I missed digging them up last summer;  it looks like there are three or so, but as they've grown from a full bulb instead of single cloves, they look like little bunches of grass, all packed together.  Hopefully I'll remember to get them out with the rest.

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