Planting Garlic in Raised Beds

Yesterday I blogged about how we made 2 raised beds. For one of the beds, we knew we wanted to grow garlic.  When we were up at the family farm, we bought this amazing garlic from a farmer that the hub's dad knew.  He mentioned that it's the best garlic he ever tasted.  Oooh, I love love love garlic so I was completely intrigued.  Aren't these beauties?  I'm not sure what variety they are but they are hardnecks and they are very flavorful.  Best garlic I've ever tasted!

I never grew garlic before so I followed the wisdom over at Daphne's Dandelions.  She has a step-by-step guide on how to plant garlic cloves!  It's excellent for beginners like us.  I soaked my cloves in a water and baking soda mixture overnight.

And I peeled all the cloves.  I left a few unpeeled just to see what the differences would be in growing.  I ended up peeling 40 cloves to plant.

 

One of the things I like about this garlic that we bought from the North Country farmer was that the cloves themselves are giant!  This one is a good 2 inches!!  And the flavor packs a punch!

I carefully measured out all the holes just like Daphne suggested.

And planted all 40 cloves.  It took up one entire bed.  I covered the bed with shredded up leaves.  I am so impatient, I just can't wait to see what comes up in the spring!  I'm also looking forward to garlic scape!  I never had those before but read so much about it throughout the blogosphere!