Thursday, October 14, 2010

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! 

13 comments:

  1. Oh you're gonna love it! One of my favorite times in the garden is pulling and hanging the garlic from the pergola in the springtime!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Meems, what beautiful garlic!!! I can hardly wait too!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Love love love garlic as well! Ours is going in this weekend, can never plant enough.
    Harvest when the plant tops fall over. We ate the scapes for the first time this year, great flavor. Also grew some on a windowsill as an experiment, the green tops have a suprisingly strong but pleasant taste.
    ~GJ

    ReplyDelete
  4. We eat a ton of garlic each year. I've been thinking about plantings some soon after I clean up a couple raised beds. Let's see those deer nibble on my garlic garden...

    ReplyDelete
  5. These are so gorgeous! What a great post...

    ReplyDelete
  6. fun. I'm also looking forward to garlic planting time! For me it's on the calendar for 10/15 each year.

    I'm glad you kept the papers on some as an experiment. I think many people don't bother with the soaking and peeling, and in fact think the papers help to protect the bulb. It will be good to see if there is a real benefit in doing this.

    ReplyDelete
  7. That garlic looks fabulous! I covered mine last year with shredded leaves and it worked great.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Daphne is a wealth of info for the home gardener. Can't wait to see the crop you harvest next spring! :)

    ReplyDelete
  9. I don't think you will have to wait until spring to see what comes up. Mine comes up in about 2 weeks.

    ReplyDelete
  10. It's going to be fantastic when all that garlic comes up!

    ReplyDelete
  11. Thanks for this. My garlic planting has been haphazard with puny results. Now I can see why.

    ReplyDelete
  12. I'm planting this week! can't wait. I'm trying the softneck and hardneck both this year. So easy and fun to grow.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Keep us posted on the garlic. Would like to grow it one day.

    ReplyDelete

We love to hear from you. Thanks for leaving a comment!

Related Posts with Thumbnails

Book Recommendations

ad