Planting Garlic – 2010

It’s Halloween and the scariest thing we could think to do is plant garlic! Today we planted 4 raised beds of garlic that each hold about 200 cloves. This is double last year’s production and the majority of what we planted came from garlic we actually grew last year. To plant garlic, you break apart a bulb and plant single cloves. Each clove produces a new head of garlic. We are hopeful that this method will yield better results since, by virtue of coming from our soil, the garlic we are planting this year will be better acclimated to the local conditions. Garlic is planted in the fall and harvested in July or August.

Each bed is 12′ x 4′ and is filled with compost and soil. We covered each bed with agricultural fabric, which is something we tried last year with decent results. We actually were able to reuse the same ag fabric from last year on this year’s beds. Ag fabric acts as a mulch and also suppresses weeds. Here’s what we planted:

• 2 lbs. Shangtang purple (20 rows or 150 cloves)
• 1.25 lbs. Music (7 rows or 52 cloves)
• 1 lb. Chesnok red (8 rows, 59 cloves)
• 1.375 lb. Georgian fire (12 rows, 90 bulbs)
• .5 lb. Tochliavri (Red Toch) (7 rows, 52 cloves)
• 2.125 lb. Transylvanian (full bed, 200 cloves)
• 2 lbs. Mystery garlic bed (full bed, 200 cloves)